Waymo · 15 hours ago
Staff Software Engineer, Perception Systems
Mountain View, CA, USA
Full-time
Onsite
Lead/Staff
$238K/yr - $302K/yrWaymo is an autonomous driving technology company dedicated to improving mobility and safety through its innovative driver technology. They are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to bridge the gap between Machine Learning Product teams and Core Infrastructure, focusing on optimizing machine learning systems for efficiency and reliability. The role involves strategic planning, troubleshooting production issues, and enhancing the overall performance of ML pipelines.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)AutomotiveAutonomous VehiclesSensorTransportation
Responsibilities
Partner with Core Infrastructure teams to influence the roadmap for compute, storage, and scheduling
Serve as the technical escalation point for production blockers
Troubleshoot complex failures that span the stack—from Python-level OOM errors in training jobs to underlying cluster scheduling, containerization, or network latency issues
Instrument modules to actively monitor and recover from instability
Profile and optimize end-to-end pipelines
Identify bottlenecks in data loading and implement C++ optimizations where Python overhead is too high
Build robust CLI tools and middleware to improve the 'inner loop' of ML development
Automate tedious tasks in remote development environments to simplify change management and validation
Write the necessary shims and wrappers to integrate new Core Infra features into the ML stack before they are officially supported
Qualification
Required
Strong proficiency in C++ (system performance, concurrency, memory management) and Python (ML modeling, scripting)
Ability to write production-ready code in a large-scale monorepo environment
Deep understanding of resource management (CPU/RAM/Accelerator isolation), job scheduling, RPC subsystems, and distributed storage
Fearless approach to debugging 'black box' system issues
Comfortable using profilers and digging into system logs to diagnose contention, deadlocks, or memory leaks
Demonstrated ability to drive technical consensus across teams
Experience defining engineering standards, mentoring senior engineers, and managing complex stakeholder relationships
Preferred
Experience with custom/proprietary build systems (e.g., Bazel-like environments)
Experience optimizing large-scale ML workloads on custom AI accelerators (TPUs/GPUs)
Familiarity with low-level serialization formats (e.g., Protocol Buffers)
Background in optimizing remote development environments or interactive notebook workflows
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.
Founded in 2009
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
Annabel Chang
Head of State Policy & Government Relations
Recent News
2026-01-25
Business Insider
2026-01-25
2026-01-25
Company data provided by crunchbase