Senior Software 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.

The Onboard Infrastructure Team is responsible for designing and developing the core infrastructure for Autonomous Driving Vehicle (ADV) systems, which includes perception, planning, and routing functionalities. This encompasses defining the architecture and frameworks used to implement these critical systems. Furthermore, the team manages the entire runtime environment for both on-car systems and large-scale simulation, focusing on end-to-end performance, reliability, and developer experience throughout the development lifecycle. This is a hybrid position reporting to a Staff Engineer, Tech Lead Manager.

In this hybrid role, you will report to a Staff Software Engineer / TLM.

You will:

• Drive architectural and framework improvements to boost driving quality, performance, reliability, and enhance the overall developer experience.
• Gain a holistic understanding of the entire Waymo code lifecycle—from deployment on autonomous vehicles to running large-scale simulations—to ensure the highest quality across all operational environments.
• Architect, implement, and deploy essential C++ APIs responsible for critical functions such as asynchrony management, experimentation pipelines, multi-platform deployments, complex data extraction, debug tooling, and advanced system visualization.
• Act as a crucial resource for onboard teams, guiding them in setting up software for maximum efficiency, flexibility, scalability, and reliability, ensuring it meets Waymo's rapidly evolving needs.
• Significantly improve our internal tools, infrastructure, and development processes to accelerate engineering velocity while maintaining tight control over system complexity, performance, reliability, and developer experience.

You have:

• BS/MS in Comp Sci, EE, Robotics, Physics, Math, or related field (or equivalent experience)
• 5 years of experience as a software engineer or similar roles
• 3 years of experience in C++
• 2 year of experience in software infrastructure/systems

We prefer:

• 3 years of experience working on a large-scale, high-complexity system (supporting hundreds of engineers)
• Experience in performance analysis, including profiling, benchmarking, and optimization
• Experience in improving software reliability and executing root cause analysis within complex software environments
• Experience developing evaluation systems and metrics
• Experience building tools to enhance the developer experience
• Experience in robotics

#LI-Hybrid

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

$213,000—$263,000 USD