Tech Lead Manager, Foundation Models

Job Summary

The Waymo AI Foundations team is seeking a leader to manage a team building large-scale foundation models. 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
• Establish 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

Benefits

Benefits for this role include:

• Health, dental, vision, life, disability 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