{"id":2409917,"url":"https://alion.io/job/waymo-staff-tech-lead-perception-pre-training-distillation","title":"Staff Tech Lead, Perception, Pre-training & Distillation","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":83,"open_postings":128,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.469,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":80,"computed_at":"2026-10-26T05:57:25Z"}},"role":"Leadership","role_family":"Leadership","seniority":"lead","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","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":5,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"Computer Vision","optional":false},{"name":"Contrastive Learning","optional":false},{"name":"JAX","optional":false},{"name":"Knowledge Distillation","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Model Distillation","optional":false},{"name":"Post-training","optional":false},{"name":"Pre-training","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":false},{"name":"Self-Supervised Learning","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-01T23:46:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-20","last_verified_at":"2026-10-26T15:16:19Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":54,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":54},"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 Perception team builds the system which learns the spatial-temporal representation and their semantic meanings of the surrounding environment of the self-driving car, i.e., the system that “perceives” the world around the car. We work jointly with downstream teams on the optimization and integration into the Waymo Driver. We conduct our own research to address real-world problems and collaborate with research teams at Alphabet. We have access to millions of miles of driving data from a diverse set of sensors, enabling engineers like you to (1) develop methods for efficiently learning from large scale real-world data, to (2) develop models and model training at scale, to (3) analyze real-world behavior and develop systems for handling the complexities of interacting with the real-world\nIn this role you will report to a Sr Staff Technical Lead Manager.\nYou will:\nTrain multi-billion parameter spatio-temporal foundation models on multi-billion frame data sets.\nDeliver pre-trained models for production usage, ideally for usage in real-time systems.\nDevelop self-supervised learning, including image/video encoder, 3D point cloud encoder, spatio-temporal reconstruction or future prediction, and vision-language contrastive learning.\nDevelop multi-teacher distillation recipes.\nDevelop methods to understand and evaluate the quality of latent representations from pre-training. Collaborate with the post-training team to ensure pre-training delivers the world knowledge representation needed for the multitude of post-training tasks.\nDevelop methods to curate and effectively use diverse datasets in training.\nBe a key contributor to technical roadmaps.\nYou have:\nMS or PhD in Computer Science or a similar discipline, or an equivalent amount of deep learning experience\n5+ years experience in Machine Learning and/or Computer Vision\nFluent in Python\nIn-depth experience with ML frameworks like PyTorch or JAX\nWe Prefer:\nPublications at top-tier conferences like CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ICLR, ICML, ICRA, RSS, NeurIPS, AAAI, IJCV, PAMI\nExperience with C++\nExperience with real-time system design\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":3490,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":5,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"master","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":"2026-10-13T01:49:48Z"}],"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":0}],"liveness":{"score":60,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.834,"p_room":0.72,"age_days":54,"expected_fill_days":80,"reasons":["conf:3","velocity","win:mid","crowd:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-26T05:57:25Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":310000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/waymo-staff-tech-lead-perception-pre-training-distillation","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/waymo-staff-tech-lead-perception-pre-training-distillation.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-26T16:39:35Z","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":22311,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-27T00:00:00Z"}},"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-tech-lead-perception-pre-training-distillation"},{"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-tech-lead-perception-pre-training-distillation"},{"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-tech-lead-perception-pre-training-distillation"},{"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-tech-lead-perception-pre-training-distillation\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fwaymo-staff-tech-lead-perception-pre-training-distillation"}]}