{"id":2409711,"url":"https://alion.io/job/waymo-staff-ml-engineer-perception-research","title":"Staff ML Engineer, Perception Research","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":84,"open_postings":138,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.449,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":76,"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"staff","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Mountain View, United States","New York, United States","Kirkland, United States","San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":251000,"max":310000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":310000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":4,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"Flax","optional":false},{"name":"FSDP","optional":false},{"name":"JAX","optional":false},{"name":"Knowledge Distillation","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Model Distillation","optional":false},{"name":"Multimodal AI","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":false},{"name":"Quantization","optional":false},{"name":"Reinforcement Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Reinforcement Learning","optional":false},{"name":"TensorFlow","optional":false},{"name":"Transformers","optional":false},{"name":"World Models","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-07T23:27:50Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-02","last_verified_at":"2026-10-18T10:06:27Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":71,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":71},"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.\nThe 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. As part of our work, we also initiate and foster collaborations with other research teams in Alphabet. AI Foundations areas that we are currently focusing on include reinforcement learning, learning from demonstration, generative modeling, Bayesian inference, hierarchical learning, and robust evaluation.\nThis role follows a hybrid work schedule and reports to a Principal Research Scientist.\nYou will:\nConduct comprehensive experimentation to train and deploy state-of-the-art Multimodal LLMs and World models to perform 3D Perception using sensor information from Camera, LiDAR and Radar..\nPartner effectively with engineering and research teams across Waymo to deploy new models, and implement efficient workflows for model development and continuous training on new front-filled data.\nApply and develop techniques such as quantization, pruning, knowledge distillation, and efficient attention mechanisms.\nDevelop and maintain scalable data pipelines for Training & Eval to process data from multiple sources.\nDesign and implement evaluation frameworks for perception models.\nDevelop infrastructure for large-scale model distillation and bulk-inference pipelines for teacher models.\nExperiment with different model partitioning and sharding strategies to improve scalability and efficiency.\nBuild and maintain tools for performance analysis, profiling (e.g., xprof), and debugging of ML models.\nYou have:\nPhD or Masters in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or a similar technical field, with 4+ years of industry or post-doc research experience in Reinforcement Learning or Foundation Models. \nProficiency in implementing model training flows in a scalable, distributed and performant manner such as Data parallel, FSDP and other sharding approaches. \nProficiency in JAX, Flax, and potentially TensorFlow/PyTorch.\nA willingness to work with complexity of globally distributed inference infrastructure.\nHands on experience with optimizing the training and inference of Transformer architectures\nWe prefer:\nPhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or Robotics, with a research focus on Reinforcement Learning, Foundation Models, or Multi-Modal learning.\nSubstantial involvement in and contributions to high impact industry AI projects.\nExperience in generative models for domains such as world models, images, videos, 3D, using techniques such as diffusion or autoregressive models.\nExperience contributing to frameworks and libraries that improve training speed and scalability (e.g., JAX, Gemax, XManager)\nDisclosure for WA Based & Remote Roles:\nIn accordance with Washington state law, we are highlighting our comprehensive benefits package, which is available to all eligible US based employees. Benefits for this role include:\nHealth, 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\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$251,000—$310,000 USD","description_format":"text","description_chars":4818,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":4,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"master","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Hybrid work"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":[],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-13T01:49:48Z"}],"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":"2026-10-15T11:24:14+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":261}],"liveness":{"score":46,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.761,"p_room":0.6,"age_days":70,"expected_fill_days":76,"reasons":["conf:0","velocity","win:late","crowd:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":310000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/waymo-staff-ml-engineer-perception-research","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/waymo-staff-ml-engineer-perception-research.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-18T11:49:03Z","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":17580,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-19T00:00:00Z"}},"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-staff-ml-engineer-perception-research"},{"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-staff-ml-engineer-perception-research"},{"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-staff-ml-engineer-perception-research"},{"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-staff-ml-engineer-perception-research\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fwaymo-staff-ml-engineer-perception-research"}]}