Staff Data Scientist, Weather

Job Summary

The successful candidate will lead initiatives for modeling weather patterns and their impact on Waymo’s ride-hailing service, and streamline operational procedures to mitigate weather-related challenges in real time. They will measure the performance of the Waymo Driver in adverse weather conditions and communicate findings to senior stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Define and uphold a high bar for measurement rigor ensuring reliable evaluation signals for deployment, scaling, and mitigation decisions.
• Identify and resolve gaps in current evaluation signals and provide necessary actionability for stakeholders.
• Build pipelines and models integrating various weather-specific data sources to enhance Waymo’s weather intelligence and prediction capabilities.
• Measure the performance of the Waymo Driver in adverse/extreme weather conditions and provide input on Waymo’s readiness to scale in challenging weather contexts.
• Develop scalable and repeatable analysis frameworks supporting multiple climate types, both domestically and internationally.
• Optimize operational processes for addressing adverse/extreme weather across various geographical territories.
• Collaborate with product, engineering, and systems engineering leads to unlock key deployment milestones.
• Be an opinionated partner influencing engineering work to improve measurement capabilities.
• Contribute to the team as a technical lead and frame/solve ambiguous problems by scoping technical priorities and innovating on statistical methods.
• Champion data science excellence and provide constructive technical feedback within the team and across Waymo.

Requirements

• Degree in a quantitative field (e.g., Statistics, Mathematics, Physics).
• Experience working with and building models for spatio-temporal data.
• Experience as a technical lead.
• Experience working in highly cross-functional teams and championing a data-driven culture.
• Expertise using advanced statistical methods in an applied setting; familiarity with ML systems/models.
• Demonstrated knowledge of data analysis libraries and packages in Python, R, and/or SQL.

Qualifications

• PhD in a quantitative, weather-adjacent field (Atmospheric Science, Meteorology, Hydrology, etc.), or academic experience developing and applying statistical methods in those fields.
• Experience working with third-party weather data sources and integrating multiple data sources.
• Experience solving problems related to weather modeling or prediction.
• A demonstrated track record of independently driving data science projects to deliver business value.
• Experience with large-scale evaluation frameworks for software development.

Benefits

Waymo offers a comprehensive benefits package including a discretionary annual bonus program, equity incentive plan, and generous Company benefits program, subject to eligibility requirements.

Pay

The expected base salary range for this full-time position across US locations is $251,000—$310,000 USD.