Waymo · 3 months ago
Staff Machine Learning Engineer, ML Performance & Optimization
San Francisco, CA
Full-time
Onsite
Senior Level, Lead/Staff
$238K/yr - $302K/yr
5+ years expWaymo is an autonomous driving technology company focused on building the Waymo Driver to improve mobility and save lives. The Staff Machine Learning Engineer will optimize neural model architectures and systems for performance across multiple platforms, while collaborating with various teams to enhance model training and inference capabilities.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)AutomotiveAutonomous VehiclesSensorTransportation
Responsibilities
Optimize neural model architectures and systems for high performance on multiple GPU and TPU platforms (e.g., onboard vs simulation platform)
Optimize neural model performance and overall system performance for systems with hard real-time constraints (Waymo’s onboard system)
Develop post-training algorithms (e.g., quantization), low-level optimizations (e.g., kernel optimization), etc. for improving inference speed and reducing inference memory consumption on modern GPU and TPU architectures
Develop new neural model architectures (e.g., sparse architectures), decoding strategies (e.g., speculative decoding), etc. for improving inference performance on modern GPU and TPU architectures
Optimize model training speed and efficiency for large models (often memory bound) and for fine-tuning (often i/o bound)
Collaborate with ML infra teams (inference frameworks, training frameworks), Onboard hardware and Simulation teams, and Alphabet’s research teams
Qualification
Required
Master's degree or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field
3+ years of experience in software development for neural model inference or neural model training, and 1+ years experience with neural model inference and training optimization on modern GPU/TPU architectures
5+ years experience in software development for real-time systems, ideally experience with real-time systems running on device (e.g., Waymo's onboard system)
Proficiency in C++, Python, and modern deep learning toolkits like PyTorch or JAX
Passionate about low-level neural net optimization and willingness to learn new architectures and tools
Deep understanding of latency and quality tradeoffs as it applies to neural network architectures and practical experience making said tradeoffs
Preferred
Experience in ML-driven production systems that develops models with large-scale data, training, evaluation, and deployment
Experience with developing and optimizing large-scale vision, video, or multi-modal foundation models
Familiarity with end-to-end models and their development challenges
Agility in a fast-paced environment
Benefits
Discretionary annual bonus program
Equity incentive plan
Generous Company benefits program
Company
Waymo
Waymo is a mobility technology company that improves transportation by developing self-driving solutions for travelers and daily commuters. It is a sub-organization of Alphabet.
1001-5000 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Waymo has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (231)
2024 (175)
2023 (268)
2022 (306)
2021 (298)
2020 (317)
Funding
Current Stage
Late StageTotal Funding
$11.1BKey Investors
Alphabet
2024-07-23Series C· $5.6B
2021-06-16Series B· $2.5B
2020-05-12Series A· $750M
Leadership Team
Tekedra Mawakana
Co-Chief Executive Officer
Elisa de Martel
Chief Financial Officer
Recent News
2026-01-09
Sherwood News
2026-01-09
2026-01-09
Company data provided by crunchbase