What is a Research Scientist at Waymo?
As a Research Scientist at Waymo, you will stand at the absolute forefront of autonomous vehicle technology. Waymo is not merely building driverless cars; they are solving one of the most complex, safety-critical engineering and artificial intelligence challenges of our generation. In this role, your research directly influences the brain of the Waymo Driver, translating cutting-edge machine learning theories into real-world systems that safely navigate public roads.
The impact of your work cannot be overstated. Unlike traditional academic research, your models and algorithms will deploy onto a physical fleet operating in highly complex urban environments. Whether you are working on perception (helping the vehicle see and categorize the world), behavior prediction (anticipating what pedestrians and other vehicles will do next), or planner/motion control (determining the safest path forward), your contributions directly affect human lives.
This position demands a rare combination of academic rigor and pragmatic engineering. You will work with massive, proprietary datasets generated by millions of self-driving miles, using state-of-the-art compute clusters to train highly sophisticated models. To succeed, you must be comfortable operating at the intersection of deep learning, robotics, and safety-critical systems, where every millisecond of latency and every decimal point of model accuracy matters.




