Software Engineer, Perception Scaling Evaluation
Waymo Open · verified Oct 22, 2026 At a glance
Mid-level Machine Learning Engineering role at Waymo. Mountain View · $175,000–$215,000 base.
aimlroles summary, based on the employer's posting.
What you'll do
- Study how the perception stack performs across driving conditions and help steer its expansion to new environments, vehicles, and sensors
- Shape next-generation perception plans with engineering teams across the organization
- Design large-scale automation and evaluation systems to establish safety, performance, and reliability results
- Improve simulation tools that emulate sensors and test complex impairments and edge-case faults
- Help approve sensing-system development stages and software releases, then present findings at milestone reviews
What you bring
- A computer science, robotics, or related technical degree, or equivalent hands-on experience
- At least two years applying AI in industry, including building, maintaining, and evaluating machine-learning products
- Experience evaluating large machine-learning software systems
- Strong C++ programming skills, with an emphasis on reliable, efficient code
Who this fits
This mid-level role suits an engineer who has worked on industrial machine-learning products and can evaluate large software systems in C++. You’ll report to a technical lead manager. The stated US base salary range is $175,000 to $215,000 per year.
From the employer
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.
The Perception team at Waymo builds technology that powers the Waymo Driver. Our software allows the Waymo Driver to perceive the world around it, make the right decision for every situation, and deliver people safely to their destinations. We conduct 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 software engineers like you to develop multi-modal models and techniques at scale.
Our mission is to build a stable foundation for a high-level Perception pipeline and the overall self-driving system. We act as the crucial interface between Waymo's hardware teams and the rest of the self-driving engineering organization, defining sensor requirements, providing critical feedback to hardware teams, and abstracting away system complexities.
The Sensor Health team's job is to make sure that sensors "just work" for the entire self-driving car software stack. We make sure that all sensors are properly calibrated and consistently monitored at all times. We are often the firsts to algorithmically process data from next-generation sensors on next-generation vehicle platforms and work closely with both hardware and software teams to provide the best possible sensor data from our many sensors perfectly aligned to our upstream customers. To this end, we develop sensor data alignment and calibration algorithms, a growing sensor health backend, and deploy our systems both into the Waymo Driver and our log processing backend.
In this hybrid role, you will report to a Technical Lead Manager.
You will:
- Dive deep into the Waymo Driver’s perception stack and build a deep understanding of its capabilities in various driving conditions
- Help set the perception development direction to allow the stack to scale to new driving environments, platforms, and sensors
- Collaborate across world-class engineering teams to influence the roadmap for next-generation perception technology
- Architect high-scale, mission-critical automation and evaluation frameworks that establish the "ultimate truth" for the safety, performance, and reliability of the Waymo Driver
- Innovate simulation tools for advanced sensor emulation, rigorously testing vehicle performance against complex impairments and edge-case faults
- Support sign-off process for all stages of sensing system development and software releases. Present results at milestone sign-off reviews
You have:
- BS in Computer Science, Robotics, similar technical field of study, or equivalent practical experience
- 2+ years of experience in industrial AI applications involving the creation, maintenance, and evaluation of ML products
- Experience developing and conducting eval for large ML software systems
- Strong experience programming in C++ with robust and efficient code
We prefer:
- MS or PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, similar technical field of study, or equivalent practical experience with at least 2 years of industry experience
- Experience with autonomous vehicles (L4) or ADAS systems (L2/L3)
- Strong software architecture skills
The 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.
Waymo 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.
Salary Range$175,000—$215,000 USD