Backend Software Engineer - Simulation at Waymo

At Waymo, we are pioneers in autonomous driving technology, dedicated to becoming the world's most trusted driver. Since our inception as the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, we have been committed to advancing the Waymo Driver—The World’s Most Experienced Driver™—to enhance mobility access and prevent traffic-related fatalities. Our Waymo Driver drives our fully autonomous ride-hailing service and is adaptable to various vehicle platforms and applications. With over ten million rider-only trips facilitated and experience from over 100 million miles on public roads and tens of billions in simulation across more than 15 U.S. states, we are at the forefront of this technological revolution.The Simulator Team at Waymo is tasked with creating cutting-edge simulations of realistic environments for the rigorous testing and training of the Waymo Driver. Our diverse and collaborative team consists of software engineers, machine learning (ML) engineers, and data scientists, all focused on developing industry-leading simulation solutions utilizing advanced ML algorithms that assess and enhance the Waymo Driver’s performance. We model the real world in detail, including realistic agents (vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists), roads, traffic control systems, weather conditions, and a comprehensive sensor suite featuring cameras, LiDAR, and radars.In this hybrid role, you will report to a Senior Engineering Manager.Your Responsibilities:Design and develop robust C++ software systems and infrastructure for our realistic world generation platform, ensuring seamless integration with downstream Waymo applications.Collaborate closely with simulation, onboard, and system engineers, as well as data scientists to drive critical milestones for Waymo.Monitor, enhance, and ensure the performance, scalability, testing, and reliability of our platform.Engage with fellow engineers to architect the long-term vision of the system.

Waymo is an innovative leader in autonomous driving technology, dedicated to becoming the world's most trusted driver. Originating from the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, we have developed the Waymo Driver—The World’s Most Experienced Driver™—to enhance mobility access and save lives lost in traffic accidents. Our Waymo Driver powers a fully autonomous ride-hail service, having completed over ten million rider-only trips, backed by vast experience driving over 100 million miles on public roads and tens of billions in simulation across more than 15 U.S. states.Within our Driver Understanding and Evaluation (DUE) team, we strive to develop comprehensive metrics for analyzing the Waymo Driver's behavior in real-world scenarios.In this hybrid role, you will report directly to a Software Engineering Manager.

Join Waymo as a Senior Software Engineer specializing in Simulation Infrastructure, where you will lead the development of innovative simulation tools and frameworks that enhance our self-driving technology. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams to design robust software solutions that drive our mission to make transportation safer and more accessible through autonomous driving.

Join Waymo as a Senior Back-End Software Engineer in our Simulation team, where you will play a vital role in building and enhancing our cutting-edge autonomous driving technologies. You will be responsible for designing and implementing robust back-end systems that support our simulation environments, helping to ensure the safety and efficiency of our self-driving vehicles.Your contributions will directly impact the future of transportation and make a difference in how people move through the world.

Waymo is at the forefront of autonomous driving technology, committed to becoming the world's most trusted driver. Originating from the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, Waymo has dedicated itself to developing the Waymo Driver—The World’s Most Experienced Driver™—to enhance mobility access while significantly reducing traffic-related fatalities. Our Waymo Driver powers a fully autonomous ride-hailing service and is adaptable to a diverse array of vehicle platforms and applications. With over ten million rider-only trips and experience from more than 100 million miles driven autonomously on public roads, Waymo is shaping the future of transportation.Our simulation environment is among the most sophisticated ever created, utilizing deterministic logic, physical dynamics, and cutting-edge Generative AI to establish a training ground for the Waymo Driver. The Simulator Evaluation team tackles the challenging question: How can we mathematically validate that a virtual world is perceptibly 'real'?We are on the lookout for a Staff Software Engineer who will take on the role of Technical Architect in this field. You will operate at the intersection of software engineering and AI, ensuring our simulated environments—whether governed by explicit rules or foundational models—accurately reflect reality.In this Staff-level position, you will report directly to a Senior Staff Software Engineering Manager and function as a Technical Lead, connecting intricate technical metrics with overarching product strategies.Your Responsibilities Will Include:Architecting Evaluation Standards: Define the 'Definition of Done' for simulation realism, anticipating product objectives (e.g., operational capabilities in snow or highway driving) and designing the evaluation roadmap to ensure our simulation fidelity evolves in alignment with onboard requirements.Acting as the System Critic: Create comprehensive mathematical frameworks to validate our hybrid virtual world, determining the balance between diverse evaluation needs—from verifying logical rules and dynamics to assessing the distribution quality of generative AI models.Building at Scale: Lead the development of large-scale, extensible evaluation platforms (in C++/Python), ensuring our metric pipelines are robust distributed systems capable of delivering clear, reproducible insights on petabytes of data.Providing Strategic, Cross-Functional Leadership: Serve as the technical liaison across various organizations, closely collaborating with AI research and other simulation teams. The evaluation workflows you design will facilitate rapid innovation and inform research trajectories.

Waymo is at the forefront of autonomous driving technology, dedicated to becoming the world’s most reliable driver. Originating from the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, our focus has been on developing the Waymo Driver—The World's Most Experienced Driver™—to enhance mobility access and save lives lost to traffic accidents. The Waymo Driver is the driving force behind our fully autonomous ride-hailing service and is adaptable to various vehicle platforms and use cases. With over ten million rider-only trips completed, we have amassed experience driving autonomously over 100 million miles on public roads and tens of billions in simulation across more than 15 U.S. states.The Simulator Team at Waymo creates advanced simulations of realistic environments for testing and training the Waymo Driver. We leverage cutting-edge machine learning algorithms to assess and improve the Waymo Driver's performance. As our simulation platform evolves, this technical leadership position will oversee the strategy for the entire Simulator software stack, ensuring it scales with emerging simulation technologies and Waymo’s growth. Your responsibilities will encompass low-level optimization through to high-level configuration, all aimed at enhancing resource utilization (CPU/RAM/TPU/GPU). You will spearhead the Simulator Platform's efficiency initiatives and represent the team in broader performance-related projects within Waymo.In this hybrid role, you will report to a Director of Software Engineering.

Join Waymo as a Staff Software Engineer specializing in Simulation Capacity Optimization. In this pivotal role, you will leverage your expertise in software engineering and simulation technology to enhance our autonomous vehicle systems. Your contributions will be vital in optimizing the performance and efficiency of our simulations, ensuring that our vehicles are equipped to navigate the complexities of real-world environments.

Waymo is at the forefront of autonomous driving technology, dedicated to becoming the most trusted driver on the planet. Originally initiated as the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, Waymo has relentlessly pursued the development of the Waymo Driver—The World’s Most Experienced Driver™—to enhance mobility access while aiming to save lives lost in traffic accidents. The Waymo Driver powers our fully autonomous ride-hailing service and can be adapted to various vehicle platforms and applications. With over ten million rider-only trips and an impressive record of over 100 million miles driven autonomously on public roads, along with tens of billions of miles simulated across 15+ U.S. states, Waymo is leading the charge in safe and effective autonomous transportation.The Simulator Team at Waymo is tasked with creating cutting-edge simulations of realistic environments that are crucial for testing and training the Waymo Driver. Our team consists of a diverse group of software engineers, machine learning engineers, and data scientists, dedicated to developing industry-leading simulation solutions that assess and enhance the performance of the Waymo Driver. By accurately modeling the real world—including self-driving vehicle dynamics, realistic agents (vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists), traffic systems, and environmental conditions—we ensure that our simulations reflect true driving scenarios. This capability is essential to our mission of creating the world's most experienced driver.The Vehicle and Automated Driving Realism team is focused on innovating tools and techniques that enhance driving realism, a core aspect of our simulation efforts. We are committed to ensuring that the data derived from our simulations accurately represents real-world driving performance, emphasizing performance, reliability, fidelity, and usability.In this role, you will report directly to a Senior Staff Engineering Manager.

Waymo, a leader in autonomous driving technology, is on a mission to become the world’s most trusted driver. Originating from the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, Waymo is dedicated to developing the Waymo Driver—The World’s Most Experienced Driver™—to enhance mobility access and ultimately save lives lost to traffic accidents. The Waymo Driver powers our fully autonomous ride-hail service and is adaptable across various vehicle platforms and product applications, having successfully completed over ten million rider-only trips while autonomously navigating over 100 million miles on public roads and simulating tens of billions of miles across more than 15 U.S. states.Our Hardware Engineering team comprises a vibrant mix of electrical, mechanical, reliability, software, and vehicle engineers. We are responsible for designing, building, and refining the products that serve as the sensory systems for Waymo's autonomous driving technology, integrating these innovations into vehicle platforms. We are looking for innovative and talented individuals to join us on this exciting journey.The Embedded Simulation team is critical to Waymo’s rapid scaling of the Waymo Driver across new vehicle and hardware platforms, as well as accelerating the development of our embedded and reliability software systems. We create tailored test environments for embedded and hardware applications and incorporate our technology into comprehensive system behavioral simulations.In this role, you will report to the Senior Director of R&D Software Engineering.

Waymo is a pioneering company in autonomous driving technology, dedicated to becoming the world's most trusted driver. Originating from the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, Waymo has committed to developing the Waymo Driver—The World’s Most Experienced Driver™—to enhance mobility access and save countless lives lost in traffic accidents. Our technology powers a fully autonomous ride-hail service and can be adapted to various vehicle platforms and applications. With over ten million rider-only trips and extensive experience driving more than 100 million miles on public roads and tens of billions of simulation miles across 15+ U.S. states, we are at the forefront of this transformative journey.The Simulation ML Infrastructure team is focused on creating scalable AI/ML infrastructure that accelerates the Simulator team in developing state-of-the-art realistic simulations for testing and training the Waymo Driver. To enhance the realism and steerability of these simulations, we leverage large foundation models trained on vast datasets to accurately represent the real world, including realistic agents (vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists), road systems, traffic control measures, and environmental conditions.We are looking for a seasoned senior individual contributor to spearhead the advancement of sophisticated AI/ML infrastructure for multi-billion parameter foundation models within ML accelerator-friendly simulations. Your expertise in massive model scaling, ML accelerators, and large-scale distributed systems will be essential in designing and scaling our systems.This position reports to an Engineering Manager.Your Responsibilities:Join a top-tier, high-performing research engineering team to push the boundaries of ultra-realistic multi-agent simulations using foundation models.Collaborate closely with the Waymo Realism Modeling team located in London and the Waymo Oxford team to utilize large foundation models for enhancing simulation realism.Operate at the intersection of data engineering, model development, and simulations, making architectural decisions. Take ownership of large, complex systems, and ensure that architectures and designs align with both technical and business objectives.Design and scale extensive distributed systems that encompass the entire ML lifecycle, facilitating planet-scale dataset generation, model training, and evaluation.Work cross-functionally to derive performance and system-level requirements for large ML systems. Convert product and business goals into measurable technical deliverables, ensuring alignment of system components.

Waymo is a pioneering company in autonomous driving technology, dedicated to becoming the world's most reliable driver. Originating as the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, we have concentrated on creating the Waymo Driver—The World’s Most Experienced Driver™—to enhance mobility access while preventing countless lives lost to traffic incidents. With over ten million rider-only trips completed and having driven autonomously over 100 million miles on public roads as well as tens of billions in simulations across more than 15 U.S. states, the Waymo Driver powers our fully autonomous ride-hail service and is adaptable to various vehicle platforms and applications.The Simulator Team at Waymo is dedicated to constructing sophisticated simulations of realistic environments for the testing and training of the Waymo Driver. You will be a part of a diverse and collaborative group of machine learning (ML) engineers, software engineers, and data scientists. Our goal is to deliver industry-leading simulation solutions by utilizing advanced ML algorithms to assess and enhance the Waymo Driver's performance. We achieve this by accurately modeling the real world, which includes realistic agents (such as vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists), roadways, traffic control systems, and weather conditions, complemented by a comprehensive sensor suite including cameras, LiDAR, and radars.To amplify the fidelity, scalability, and controllability of our simulations, we leverage cutting-edge ML technologies, including large language models, foundational world models, and reconstructive methods trained on extensive datasets, alongside traditional rendering techniques.In this hybrid role, you will report directly to a Senior Staff Engineering Manager.

Waymo is a pioneer in autonomous driving technology, dedicated to becoming the world's most trusted driver. Originating from the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, Waymo has developed the Waymo Driver—The World’s Most Experienced Driver™—to enhance mobility access while preventing countless traffic-related fatalities. The Waymo Driver powers our fully autonomous ride-hail service and can be integrated across various vehicle platforms and applications. Having completed over ten million rider-only trips, the Waymo Driver has autonomously navigated more than 100 million miles on public roads and tens of billions in simulated environments across 15+ U.S. states.Join the In-Car Experience team at Waymo, where we focus on how riders interact with our cutting-edge autonomous vehicle technology. We are responsible for designing and developing the user-facing software and systems within the vehicle, ensuring a safe and intuitive experience for every journey. Be part of our mission to shape the future of in-car interactions for autonomous ride-hailing.In this role, you will take ownership of the backend systems and API interfaces that enhance the rider experience, serving as a crucial link between the autonomous vehicle, the cloud infrastructure, and user-facing applications.

Waymo is at the forefront of autonomous driving technology, striving to become the world's most trusted driver. Originating from the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, Waymo has dedicated itself to creating the Waymo Driver—the world's most experienced driver™—with the aim of enhancing mobility access while preventing the countless lives lost in traffic accidents. The Waymo Driver powers our fully autonomous ride-hailing service and is adaptable across various vehicle platforms and use cases. With over ten million rider-only trips under its belt and extensive experience driving more than 100 million miles on public roads, complemented by extensive simulations across 15+ U.S. states, Waymo is leading the charge in safe and efficient transportation solutions.The Planner Evaluation team addresses a pivotal challenge in autonomous driving: enhancing and quantifying the software that drives our vehicles. We seek seasoned data-driven software engineers and data scientists passionate about autonomous vehicles and utilizing complex data to drive informed decisions. This is the perfect opportunity for someone eager to make a significant impact in the field!In this hybrid role, you will report directly to an Engineering Manager.You will:Develop performance metrics and driving quality signals for the Waymo driver utilizing various techniques, including statistics, mathematics, physics, algorithms, and machine learning.Innovatively use simulations and analyze real-world driving logs to assess driving performance.Design and implement robust methods to strengthen the correlation between changes in onboard software and simulated results.Advocate for code quality and best practices within a large and intricate code base.Analyze data and provide insights for enhancing metric quality and interpretability.Collaborate effectively with engineers, data scientists, statisticians, and leadership to deliver evaluation products and facilitate data-driven decisions.Rapidly validate the effectiveness of additional coverage, ensuring solutions are robust for customer teams to manage their own evaluations.

Waymo, a leader in autonomous driving technology, is dedicated to becoming the world's most trusted driver. Originating from the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, we have developed the Waymo Driver—The World’s Most Experienced Driver™—to enhance mobility access and significantly reduce traffic-related fatalities. Our technology has successfully completed over ten million rider-only trips, thanks to our extensive experience of autonomously navigating more than 100 million miles on public roads and executing tens of billions of miles in simulation across 15+ U.S. states.The Hardware Engineering team at Waymo is a dynamic and collaborative group of electrical, mechanical, reliability, software, and vehicle engineers. We design, construct, and refine the essential components that serve as the sensory systems for Waymo's autonomous driving technology, integrating these innovations into various vehicle platforms. We’re on the lookout for inquisitive and skilled individuals to help propel us forward.This position operates under a hybrid work schedule and reports to the Systems Engineering Manager.

Waymo LLC develops autonomous driving technology in Mountain View, CA, with a mission to improve road safety and mobility. Since its origins as the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, Waymo has logged over 100 million miles on public roads and completed more than ten million rider-only trips across more than 15 states. Perception Team The Perception team builds the systems that allow the Waymo Driver to understand its surroundings, make decisions in real time, and ensure passenger safety. This work relies on large-scale, multi-modal machine learning models trained on millions of miles of sensor data. Role overview This Principal Software Engineer (hybrid) will report directly to the Senior Director of Engineering, Perception. The position focuses on advancing the Waymo Driver’s post-training capabilities and supporting the technology roadmap for perception models. Key responsibilities Partner with Onboard model engineers to prototype and test new model designs and training methods before they move to production. Create infrastructure for model experimentation, including robust data and evaluation frameworks. Lead the post-training technology roadmap, exploring reinforcement learning and related techniques. Support production rollout of major improvements in model architecture and training recipes to address diverse behavioral situations. Foster strong partnerships between Onboard and research teams within Waymo and Alphabet. Collaborate with Onboard and other stakeholders to evolve and execute the post-training recipe roadmap for significant advancements and production impact.

Waymo, a leader in autonomous driving technology, is dedicated to becoming the world's most trusted driver. Originating from the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, Waymo has committed to developing the Waymo Driver—The World's Most Experienced Driver™—which not only enhances mobility access but also aims to save lives lost in traffic accidents. The Waymo Driver powers our fully autonomous ride-hailing service and is adaptable across various vehicle platforms and applications. With over ten million rider-only trips completed and more than 100 million miles driven autonomously on public roads, plus extensive simulation across 15+ U.S. states, Waymo is setting the standard for safety and innovation in transportation.In this hybrid role, you will report to the Sr. Staff Manager.

Waymo is pioneering the future of autonomous driving technology with a vision to become the world's most trusted driver. Originating from the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, Waymo has dedicated itself to creating the Waymo Driver—The World’s Most Experienced Driver™—which aims to enhance mobility access and save countless lives lost in traffic accidents. Powering Waymo’s fully autonomous ride-hailing platform, the Waymo Driver is adaptable across various vehicle types and applications. With over ten million rider-only trips achieved and a remarkable track record of driving more than 100 million miles on public roads and tens of billions in simulation across 15+ U.S. states, Waymo is at the forefront of transforming transportation.The Driver Understanding and Evaluation team at Waymo is crucial in developing an in-depth understanding of the Waymo Driver's behavior. With an impressive capacity of over one million driverless miles each week, it is essential for Waymo to comprehend and evaluate all vehicle behaviors—both in real-world scenarios and simulations—through automated algorithms. The learned metrics team is a strategic initiative employing machine learning to scale and meet Waymo's ambitious goals. We work collaboratively across various teams to transition machine learning into production systems and establish Waymo’s reward function. Our focus is on building and maintaining large-scale machine learning and data systems, simulation workflows, and analytical tools. By merging expert human insights with cutting-edge machine learning models, we provide training and evaluation data for the Waymo driver. We seek enthusiastic researchers and software engineers who are passionate about creating robust production-grade machine learning systems for our autonomous vehicles and possess an unwavering commitment to enhancing our technology stack's performance.

At Waymo, we are pioneering the future of autonomous driving technology with a mission to become the world’s most trusted driver. Originating from the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, our focus is on developing the Waymo Driver—The World’s Most Experienced Driver™—to enhance mobility access and prevent the tragic loss of lives due to traffic accidents. The Waymo Driver not only powers our fully autonomous ride-hailing service but is also adaptable to various vehicle platforms and use cases. With over ten million trips completed and more than 100 million miles driven autonomously on public roads, we are setting the standard in the industry.The Simulator Team at Waymo is dedicated to creating advanced simulations that replicate realistic environments for the testing, training, and validation of the Waymo Driver. Our diverse and collaborative group of machine learning (ML) engineers, software engineers, and ML research engineers develop cutting-edge simulation solutions that utilize sophisticated generative and reconstructive ML algorithms. These simulations model real-world scenarios, including realistic agents, roads, traffic systems, weather conditions, and an extensive sensor suite (Camera, Lidar, Radar).In this position, you will play a crucial role in enhancing the fidelity, scalability, and richness of our simulations. By leveraging state-of-the-art ML technologies and large-scale datasets, you will help create dynamic virtual worlds that directly influence the development and validation of the Waymo Driver.In this role, you will report to a Senior Staff Engineering Manager.

Waymo is pioneering the future of autonomous driving technology with a commitment to becoming the most trusted driver worldwide. Since its inception as the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, Waymo has dedicated itself to developing the Waymo Driver—The World’s Most Experienced Driver™—with the goal of enhancing mobility access and saving countless lives currently lost to traffic accidents. The Waymo Driver not only powers our fully autonomous ride-hail service but is also adaptable across various vehicle platforms and applications. Having completed over ten million rider-only trips and autonomously navigated more than 100 million miles on public roads, our technology has undergone extensive testing, including tens of billions of miles in simulations across more than 15 U.S. states.The Simulator Team at Waymo specializes in creating cutting-edge simulations of realistic environments designed for the rigorous testing and training of the Waymo Driver. Our diverse and collaborative team comprises software engineers, machine learning (ML) engineers, and data scientists, all united in our mission to develop industry-leading simulation solutions utilizing advanced ML algorithms to measure and enhance the Waymo Driver's performance. By leveraging machine learning, we meticulously model real-world scenarios, including realistic agents such as vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, roads, traffic control systems, and varying weather conditions.To enhance the fidelity and steerability of our simulations, we integrate the latest ML technologies, including large foundation models trained on our exclusive datasets and advanced diffusion techniques. Our investment in robust infrastructure facilitates the swift setup and deployment of multiple scenarios for comprehensive testing of our autonomous driving systems.In this hybrid role, you will report to a Senior Engineering Manager.

Waymo is at the forefront of autonomous driving technology, dedicated to becoming the world’s most trusted driver. Originating from the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, Waymo has developed the Waymo Driver—The World’s Most Experienced Driver™—aiming to enhance mobility access while significantly reducing road traffic fatalities. The Waymo Driver powers our fully autonomous ride-hail service and is adaptable to various vehicle platforms and use cases. With over ten million rider-only trips and the experience of driving autonomously over 100 million miles on public roads, coupled with tens of billions of miles in simulation across more than 15 U.S. states, we are redefining transportation.The Simulator Team at Waymo is tasked with creating cutting-edge simulations of realistic environments to rigorously test and train the Waymo Driver. Our diverse and collaborative team comprises software engineers, machine learning engineers, and data scientists dedicated to developing industry-leading simulation solutions using advanced machine learning algorithms to elevate the Waymo Driver’s performance. By harnessing the power of machine learning, we replicate real-world scenarios, including vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists, traffic control systems, and weather conditions.To enhance the fidelity and steerability of our simulations, we utilize the latest machine learning technologies, such as large foundational World Models trained on our datasets, world understanding and reasoning capabilities for edge cases, and reinforcement learning for long-term credit assignment. We also invest in robust infrastructure that allows us to rapidly set up and deploy multiple counterfactual scenarios for thorough testing of our autonomous driving systems.In this hybrid role, you will report to a Senior Staff Tech Lead Manager.