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Waymo

Senior Software Engineer, Mapping Data & Eval

Waymo is hiring a Senior Software Engineer, Mapping Data & Eval in San Francisco and Mountain View, United States. It pays $213k-$263k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Waymo.

Level's read on this job

  • Level rates this software engineer role Builds AI ●●●●: the job is building AI systems.
  • Pay on this posting starts 27% higher than the typical software engineer posting on Level.
  • The posting mentions Python, C and Distributed Systems among its tools and skills.
  • Level classes it as a senior role.
  • Waymo has 365 other open roles on Level.

AI in this role

Build applied ML models, evaluation engines, and large-scale data infrastructure to automate HD mapping for autonomous driving.

PythonCDistributed Systems
computer-visionmachine-learningstatistical-analysisdata-pipelinesmapping

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 Roadgraph team builds the intelligent platform and automated pipelines that create, validate, and scale the high-definition geo knowledge base powering the Waymo Driver. We combine applied machine learning, computer vision, statistical evaluation, and large-scale distributed systems to solve one of the most foundational and exciting challenges in autonomous driving.

High-definition mapping is a foundational pillar enabling the Waymo Driver to navigate safely, smoothly, and reliably. To rapidly expand commercial autonomous ride-hailing to new cities and continents, we must scale our automated mapping pipelines. This role sits at the center of that mission—building the applied ML models, evaluation engines, and large-scale data infrastructure that transform real-world sensor streams into the world's most precise and reliable spatial knowledge base.

We work closely with onboard engineers to solve problems in an end to end fashion. You will be working on all aspects of the modeling life cycle (labeling, training, evaluation, inference), put your models to work, and measure impact on the overall system.

You will:

  • Evaluate and launch machine learning models that automatically generate map from raw data.
  • Work with onboard teams to evolve Waymo’s mapping format to make it more automation friendly.
  • Apply statistical analysis to validate large-scale changes.
  • Build backend infrastructure for storing and processing many forms of map data.
  • Scale our systems to support mapping the whole world.

You have:

  • B.S. in Computer Science or a similar technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
  • Hands-on experience with statistical analysis, experiment design, and quantitative evaluation of ML models or data pipelines.
  • Experience building scalable data processing pipelines using distributed frameworks like Google Data Flow or Apache Beam.
  • Demonstrated ability to take ownership of complex technical problems end-to-end and deliver measurable results in a collaborative team environment.
  • A passion for good software engineering.

We prefer:

  • Master’s or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, Computer Vision, or a related quantitative field.
  • Experience with high-performance computing, C++ optimization, and large-scale distributed systems architecture.
  • Domain familiarity with autonomous vehicles, robotics, high-definition (HD) mapping or GIS/spatial databases.

#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

How we rate this

Senior Software Engineer, Mapping Data & Eval at Waymo rates 90 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.

  1. ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
  2. ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
  3. ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
  4. ●○○○ 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.

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

Computer visionMachine learningStatistical AnalysisData PipelinesMappingPythonCDistributed Systems

Also common in software engineer jobs at this level

Pay

This job starts at
$213k
Typical software engineer job
$167k

This posting starts 27% above the typical software engineer job. See software engineer jobs

Questions you could be asked

  1. Walk me through a computer vision problem you solved, from raw data to a deployed model.
  2. Tell me about a project where machine learning was part of your work. What did you do?
  3. Tell me about a project where statistical analysis was part of your work. What did you do?
  4. Tell me about a project where data pipelines was part of your work. What did you do?
  5. Tell me about a project where mapping was part of your work. What did you do?

Adapt your resume

  • List these exact terms on your resume: Computer vision, Machine learning, Statistical Analysis, Data Pipelines, and Mapping. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
  • Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
  • Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.

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