Proving Ground Technician Manager

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.

In this role, you will scale global fleet readiness by diagnosing novel issues, enable Waymo partners in depots, & support our engineering peers to ensure rapid platform enablement to deliver the Waymo Driver to the world.

This role will work onsite in the office and reports to the Senior Lead, Fleet Readiness. 

You will:

• Manage complex and novel testing program requirements with high detail and concise feedback loops to effectively develop the Waymo driver and new OEM integration platforms at scale. The program requires close coordination across multiple testing facilities to support upcoming vehicle platforms and shifting testing volume.
• Maintain the ability to pivot resources and realign to dynamically shifting needs of accelerated programs. This includes managing the shift in work volume from technically mature platforms and systems to less mature vehicles. As well as upcoming platform mules and very early prototypes.
• Intake information from program managers to effectively prioritize new workflows, overlapping requirements, and conflicting needs across high priority asks from Waymo. Priorities must align with shifting fleet counts, including the scaling of multiple vehicle configurations through early phase NPI including non production interposer builds and the management of decommissioning at end of life.
• Establish SLAs and KPIs with our extended workforce teams and vendor managers to maintain rigorous operational metrics. These targets will cover key scope areas such as fleet health maintenance, work order resolution, and the build-up of specific hardware testing lab assets.
• Coordinate testing priorities and workflows with cross-functional engineering leads, including the Systems Engineering teams responsible for allocating and running closed course testing missions. Manage both short term and long term priorities with project leads and on site staff to ensure operational effectiveness and program milestones are met.
• The Proving Grounds manager must effectively plan, manage and project the growth of their teams and resources relative to the overall programs they support. Advocating where required to ensure the technician workforce can meet the demand requirements of engineering and testing as Waymo rapidly expands its mission to be the world's safest driver.

You have:

• A high level of technical capacity to effectively communicate across multiple stakeholders, support root cause analysis on trending issues impacting fleet performance, commit to the continuous improvement of the resources and fleet broadly across the closed course portfolio, and integrate seamlessly with the Systems Engineering ecosystem.
• Workshop management experience. Specifically experience supporting technician teams, testing environments and a deeper understanding of tooling and infrastructure required for successful testing in a proving ground or closed course environment.
• Experience supporting rapidly changing testing configurations in software (firmware) and hardware across multiple platforms at the same time.
• The ability to pivot resources and realign to dynamically shifting needs of accelerated programs, transitioning from mature platforms to highly complex, less mature assets.
• Strong verbal, written, and interpersonal communication skills, with the ability to work effectively with cross-functional teams, external partners, and executives.
• Analytical skills to identify developmental opportunities and communicate them effectively.

We prefer:

• Experience with OEM and novel diagnostic tools for testing and or troubleshooting. Specifically in unique validation environments to further develop platforms and processes.
• High level understanding of various self-driving vehicle systems (sensors, compute, wiring, power, vehicle actuators, chassis communication, controls, etc.), and mastery of one or more.
• Technical hands on experience with vehicle platforms to understand the end to end requirements of vehicle test and fleet maintenance.
• Experience designing, improving, and deploying operational processes using change management best practices.
• Familiarity with fleet operations or fleet management principles.

Travel requirements: Up to 20%