Senior Staff ML Engineer

About the Company

Waymo is an autonomous driving technology company with the mission to be the world's most trusted driver. The Waymo Driver powers Waymo’s fully autonomous ride-hail service and has provided over ten million rider-only trips.

Responsibilities

• Grow the end-to-end strategy for next generation machine learning-based evaluation metrics
• Architect and build scalable systems for training and fine-tuning large-scale generative models
• Lead the design and implementation of novel RL algorithms and reward functions
• Lead the development of cutting-edge Deep Learning models and Generative AI (LLM/VLM) solutions
• Develop a novel Reinforcement Learning from Human Preference (RLHF) based data collection and evaluation system
• Provide technical mentorship and thought leadership to engineers across collaborating groups
• Align multiple teams on a cohesive evaluation strategy

Requirements

• PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, AI, or related field, or equivalent experience
• 10+ years of experience developing and applying Machine Learning models
• Significant focus on Reinforcement Learning
• 2+ years of people management experience
• Expertise in deep learning, sequence modeling, and generative models
• Strong publication record or history of impactful project delivery in RL
• Proficiency in Python and ML frameworks like JAX or TensorFlow
• Experience with large-scale distributed training and data processing
• Ability to lead complex and ambiguous technical projects

Preferred Qualifications

• 12+ years of relevant experience in ML/RL research and application
• Experience in autonomous vehicles, robotics, or complex simulation environments
• Deep understanding of state-of-the-art RL techniques including fine-tuning from human feedback
• Familiarity with large-scale simulation platforms and ML training workflows
• Experience designing metrics for evaluating complex AI systems
• Track record of technical leadership and influencing senior stakeholders