{"id":3557952,"url":"https://alion.io/job/waymo-sr-staff-systems-engineer-perception-planner-risk","title":"Sr. Staff Systems Engineer, Perception-Planner Risk","company":{"id":98,"name":"Waymo","domain":"waymo.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/waymo","size_band":"5000+","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":82,"open_postings":130,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.515,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":78,"computed_at":"2026-11-02T06:13:15Z"}},"role":"Operations","role_family":"Operations","seniority":"staff","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Mountain View, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":272000,"max":336000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":336000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":10,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Verification & Validation","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-30T22:30:50Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-30","last_verified_at":"2026-11-03T01:27:21Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":3,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":3},"description":"Waymo is an autonomous driving technology company with the mission to be the world's most trusted driver. Since its start as the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, Waymo has focused on building the Waymo Driver-The World's Most Experienced Driver™-to improve access to mobility while saving thousands of lives now lost to traffic crashes. The Waymo Driver powers Waymo’s fully autonomous ride-hail service and can also be applied to a range of vehicle platforms and product use cases. The Waymo Driver has provided over ten million rider-only trips, enabled by its experience autonomously driving over 100 million miles on public roads and tens of billions in simulation across 15+ U.S. states.\nWaymo's Systems Engineering team works together to blend software and hardware systems in groundbreaking new ways. We set the high performance standards that ensure our vehicles run smoothly and keep passengers safe, then design and perform the tests that validate that performance. We're looking for talented teammates who’ll help us maintain strong teamwork and are passionate about driving results.\nYou will:\nDefine the approach for quantitative safety risk analysis across sensing and perception systems engineering, building on top of Waymo-wide risk assessment and management methodologies. You will design, develop, and implement sophisticated quantitative methods and statistical models for evaluating end-to-end performance for current and counterfactual sensor suites.\nApply the defined approach for selected events that occur rarely or have scarce operational data. The generalized goal is to assess behavioral safety risk across a wide variety of situations like interacting with pedestrian crowds, navigating around floods, and degraded sensing in construction zones. \nDevelop and prototype novel workflows to:\nAnalyze to determine the required performance levels of various sensing and perception tasks\nSupport trade studies to inform architectural decisions for perception hardware or software\nEstimate exposure of events relevant to perception-driven behavioral risk \nImprove quantitative rigor, standardization, efficiency of execution, and reporting of end-to-end risk from V&V test outcomes in complex contexts. \nExpand existing methodologies that are crucial for breaking into new operational design domains and addressing emergent challenges\nCollaborate closely with: \nOnboard Software and Evaluation for mapping perception evaluation and planner evaluation to end-to-end risk in large models \nTest Engineering for cross-calibrating risk from V&V results across various methodologies and coverage competencies, and providing actionable data to improve Waymo’s test tooling across public roads/closed course tests and simulations on logged/synthetic scenarios\nSystems Safety for appropriate allocation of quantitative risk across functional insufficiencies\nClearly communicate complex quantitative findings and recommendations to diverse stakeholders, including senior leadership, to enable safety at scale. You will collaborate deeply within SysEng and cross-functionally with Product, Simulation, and Data science teams to advance safely and deliver excellence. \nYou have:\nBachelors or higher degree in computer science, math, physics, engineering, or a related field\n10+ years of engineering experience with demonstrated delivery of high-stakes technical roadmaps that successfully resolved architectural friction and deployed business-critical systems \nExperience using AI productivity tools for analysis and workflow development \nProficiency and experience in:\nVehicular robotics (development or evaluation) \nSoftware development (Python or C++) \nStatistical or predictive modeling\nExperimental design and developing metrics for quantitative methods\nDeep technical knowledge of at least two of: \nState of the art ML techniques that power modern perception systems and large end-to-end models\nQuantitative risk estimation using simulators, preferably with sensors-in-loop\nSystems engineering fundamentals such as requirements definition, formal verification and validation methods\nTrack record of leading complex projects in safety critical applications with leadership-facing accountability across software, operations, data science, product, and testing\nExcellent verbal and written communication skills, and ability to manage by influence \nWe prefer:\nMasters (with thesis) or PhD in machine learning, statistics, robotics, or a related quantitative field \nAutonomy driving industry experience\nExperience testing on large-scale infrastructure and deploying production-level safety critical systems\nTrack record of developing model-driven metrics that influence software or hardware design decisions at scale \nThe expected base salary range for this full-time position across US locations is listed below. Actual starting pay will be based on job-related factors, including exact work location, experience, relevant training and education, and skill level. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for the role location or, if the role can be performed remote, the specific salary range for your preferred location, during the hiring process. \nWaymo employees are also eligible to participate in Waymo’s discretionary annual bonus program, equity incentive plan, and generous Company benefits program, subject to eligibility requirements. \nSalary Range\n$272,000—$336,000 USD","description_format":"text","description_chars":5421,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":10,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Autonomous Driving","Smart Mobility","Ride Hailing"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-31T02:10:00Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 331 · green card filings: 28","filings_12m":331,"filings_prev_12m":227,"green_card_filings_12m":28,"median_offered_wage_usd":206330,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-29T16:27:21+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":0}],"liveness":{"score":63,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.632,"p_room":1,"age_days":2,"expected_fill_days":78,"reasons":["conf:2","stale_co","velocity","win:early","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-11-02T06:13:15Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":336000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/waymo-sr-staff-systems-engineer-perception-planner-risk","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/waymo-sr-staff-systems-engineer-perception-planner-risk.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-03T04:37:53Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":6275,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-04T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":98},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=98"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fwaymo-sr-staff-systems-engineer-perception-planner-risk"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fwaymo-sr-staff-systems-engineer-perception-planner-risk"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fwaymo-sr-staff-systems-engineer-perception-planner-risk"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/waymo-sr-staff-systems-engineer-perception-planner-risk\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fwaymo-sr-staff-systems-engineer-perception-planner-risk"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3557952}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"waymo.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3557952},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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