2027 Summer Intern, PhD, Research Scientist Intern

Waymo is hiring a 2027 Summer Intern, PhD, Research Scientist Intern in Mountain View, United States. It pays $85/hr and Level rates it ; you can apply on Waymo.

Level's read on this job

Little AI ●○○○ is how Level rates this research scientist role: aI is not part of the work.
Level classes it as an internship.
Waymo has 367 other open roles on Level.
Posted in the last few days.

AI in this role

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.

Software Engineering builds the brains of Waymo's fully autonomous driving technology. Our software allows the Waymo Driver to perceive the world around it, make the right decision for every situation, and deliver people safely to their destinations. We think deeply and solve complex technical challenges in areas like robotics, perception, decision-making and deep learning, while collaborating with hardware and systems engineers. If you’re a software engineer or researcher who’s curious and passionate about Level 4 autonomous driving, we'd like to meet you.

Waymo interns partner with leaders in the industry on projects that create impact to the company. We believe learning is a two-way street: applying your knowledge while providing you with opportunities to expand your skill-set. Interns are an important part of our culture and our recruiting pipeline. Join us at Waymo for a fun and rewarding internship!

You will:

Research and read SOTA literature from frontier labs
Prototype research solutions to current system bottlenecks (shortcut learning, sensitivity w.r.t inputs, etc.)
Ideally own an medium-to-large scale E2E research project to develop the next-gen critic model at Waymo

You have:

Currently enrolled in a PhD program in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, or a related quantitative field
Foundational ML knowledge (pre-LLM era)
Expert knowledge on LLM, VLM, VLA
Strong software development experience in Python and debugging capability

We prefer:

Strong knowledge in RL
Understanding of how modern “thinking” mode works

Note: This will be a hybrid onsite internship position. We will accept resumes on a rolling basis until the role is filled. To be in consideration for multiple roles, you will need to apply to each one individually - please apply to the top 3 roles you are interested in.

The expected hourly rate for this full-time position is listed below. Interns are also eligible to participate in the Company’s generous benefits programs, subject to eligibility requirements.Hourly PhD Pay$85—$85 USD

How we rate this

2027 Summer Intern, PhD, Research Scientist Intern at Waymo rates 11 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Little AI (AI Level 1 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Little AI. AI is not part of the work.

●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.