Senior Software Engineer, Maneuver Reasoning Evaluation

Company: Waymo
Location: Mountain View
Posted on: May 20, 2025

Job Description:

Waymo is an autonomous driving technology company with the mission to be the 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 One, a fully autonomous ride-hailing service, and can also be applied to a range of vehicle platforms and product use cases. The Waymo Driver has provided over one million rider-only trips, enabled by its experience autonomously driving tens of millions of miles on public roads and tens of billions in simulation across 13+ U.S. states.Planner Reasoning is responsible for Waymo's high-level motion planning, encoding Waymo's desired driving behaviors onboard and offboard. Our mission is to build the driving logic needed to deliver a safe, excellent Waymo Driver at scale. Whether we're building motion planning algorithms, defining behavioral eval, or monitoring production driving - we continuously strive to make autonomous vehicles safer, more comfortable, and more predictable. We have an exciting opportunity for a Senior Software Engineer, Evaluation within our Maneuver Reasoning team. In this role, you will be an accelerator for evaluation and data driven-development within Planner Reasoning.
You will:

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• Drive Product Value through Engineering: Collaborate closely with Product teams to design and implement engineering solutions for user-facing features. You'll quantitatively evaluate their value proposition by defining key metrics, designing for counterfactual logging, and implementing data slicing to uncover important trade-offs.
  
• Champion Data-Driven Decisions: Extract meaningful quantitative signals from vast datasets, partnering with Data Science and Data Infrastructure teams to build and leverage powerful analytical tools. Success requires strong data fluency, including an understanding of A/B testing, precision, and recall concepts.
  
• Influence Core Vehicle Software: This role extends beyond pure analysis, offering a unique opportunity to contribute directly to the development of critical vehicle software. You'll influence foundational technologies that impact both onboard (vehicle-deployed) and offboard systems, directly shaping the Waymo platform.
  
  You must have:
  
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  • BS in Computer Science, Robotics, or similar technical field of study, or equivalent practical experience
    
  • 4+ years of Software Engineering experience
    
  • Proficiency in C++/Python
    
  • Fluency in data-driven development
    
  • Experience in solving real-world robotics problems (driving, or similar domains)
    
  • Experience in translating product requirements to engineering roadmaps and building data-driven techniques to track performance and improvements to the system
    
    We prefer:
    
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    • Experience with applied ML (especially building eval that enables ML model development)
      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$204,000-$259,000 USD

Keywords: Waymo, North Highlands , Senior Software Engineer, Maneuver Reasoning Evaluation, IT / Software / Systems , Mountain View, California