Tech Lead Manager, Foundation Models

About the role

The mission of the Waymo AI Foundations team is to develop machine learning solutions addressing open problems in autonomous driving, towards the goal of safely operating Waymo vehicles in dozens of cities and under all driving conditions. This role follows a hybrid work schedule and reports to a Research Director.

Responsibilities

• Lead and manage a team to build large-scale foundation models, powering many offboard and onboard applications for the Waymo Driver
• Set the technical direction for the team, develop the execution strategies, and align individual efforts with the overall strategies
• Develop a collaborative relationship with cross-functional teams across Waymo, including simulation, planner, semantics, and ML infrastructure
• Establish an inclusive culture for the team, enabling research innovations and delivering impactful results

Requirements

• 2+ years of experience managing medium-size teams
• Track record in developing team culture and growing people
• 6+ years experience in deep learning research or applied research
• Technical experience working with LLMs / VLMs or world models

Preferred

• Strong background in foundation model related domains, such as pretraining, mid-training, post-training, Transformer modeling, model scaling, self-supervised learning.
• Experience working with productionizing deep learning models

Qualifications

• PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Applied Mathematics, or a related field
• Relevant industry experience in deep learning research or applied research

Skills

• Experience with large-scale machine learning and model training
• Knowledge of reinforcement learning, learning from demonstration, generative modeling, Bayesian inference, hierarchical learning, and robust evaluation

Benefits

• Health, dental, vision insurance
• Retirement Benefits: 401(k) with company match
• Paid Time Off: 20 days of vacation per year, accruing at a rate of 6.15 hours per pay period for the first five years of employment
• Sick Time: 40 hours/year (statutory, where applicable); 5 days/event (discretionary)
• Maternity Leave (Short-Term Disability + Baby Bonding): 28-30 weeks
• Baby Bonding Leave: 18 weeks
• Holidays: 13 paid days per year

Pay

The expected base salary range for this full-time position across US locations is $298,000—$368,000 USD.

Schedule

This role follows a hybrid work schedule.