Waymo · 6 hours ago
Applied Research Scientist, Perception LLM/VLM (PhD, New Grad)
Mountain View, CA
Full-time
Onsite
Senior Level
$170K/yr - $216K/yr
5+ years expWaymo is an autonomous driving technology company with the mission to be the world's most trusted driver. They are seeking an Applied Research Scientist to design and optimize pre-training pipelines for VLM foundation models and conduct research to improve the perception systems for autonomous vehicles.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)AutomotiveAutonomous VehiclesSensorTransportation
Responsibilities
Design, implement, and optimize large-scale continual pre-training pipelines for cutting-edge VLM foundation models
Conduct research and development on novel pre-training techniques, focusing on efficiently integrating new, diverse, and multimodal data streams (e.g., visual data from different sensors) into existing models
Develop and rigorously evaluate metrics and methodologies for measuring the performance, and transferability of continually pre-trained foundation models in the context of autonomous driving
Stay current with the latest advancements in large language models, vision-language models, and continual learning, and translate relevant research into production-ready systems
Qualification
Required
5+ years of experience in Machine Learning, with a focus on large-scale model development (LLM, VLM, or similar foundation models)
Proven expertise in LLM/VLM pre-training, continual learning with large scale datasets
Strong coding proficiency in Python and deep learning frameworks (e.g., Jax, TensorFlow, PyTorch)
Hands-on experience with model training, evaluation, and deployment in a production environment
Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
Preferred
Experience in fine-tuning foundation models for autonomous driving or robotics applications
Familiarity with large-scale data curation and quality assurance processes for multimodal datasets
Background in autonomous vehicle perception, motion planning, or decision-making systems
Publications in top-tier machine learning or computer vision conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV)
PhD in a relevant field
Benefits
Waymo’s 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
2026-01-12
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2026-01-12
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