Hardware Engineer

Waymo is an autonomous driving technology company with the mission to be the world's 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’s fully autonomous ride-hail service and can also be applied to a range of vehicle platforms and product use cases. The Waymo Driver has provided over ten million rider-only trips, enabled by its experience autonomously driving over 100 million miles on public roads and tens of billions in simulation across 15+ U.S. states.

Hardware Engineering is an innovative and collaborative group of electrical, mechanical, reliability, software and vehicle engineers. We design, build, and perfect the products which are the eyes and ears of Waymo's autonomous driving technology, and integrate those products into vehicle platforms. We're seeking curious and talented teammates to keep us moving in the right direction.        

This role follows a hybrid work schedule (at least 3 fixed days in the office) and reports to the LiDAR performance lead.

You will:

• Work closely with electrical, mechanical, manufacturing and reliability engineers to develop and characterize high performance LiDAR systems and electro-optical subsystems
• Develop bench characterization methods and accompanying physics-based software models to ensure the design is on track to achieve top level performance goals. Develop and maintain performance validation plans that scale appropriately with the design lifecycle from early bench prototypes to high volume production
• Support definition of appropriate test and calibration procedures to ensure LiDAR data quality at scale. Work with design and test engineers to develop appropriate testing procedures and performance acceptance criteria.
• Design and oversee execution of LiDAR field measurements and structured tests. Assess impact of environmental conditions on Lidar performance, help develop methods to detect and mitigate data quality impact of adverse environmental factors through experimental design, data mining and analysis
• Interface with LiDAR software engineers, perception software engineers and systems engineers to help triage field issues related to LiDAR data quality, and aid in requirement derivation to ensure the LiDAR module upholds system-level performance and safety goals
• Comfortably transition between physics modeling, simulation, large-scale data analysis and hands-on prototyping & testing in the lab

You have:

• Masters of science with 5+ years experience or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Physics, Applied Physics or equivalent