# Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Driver Refinement & Validation at Waymo

Waymo is hiring a Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Driver Refinement & Validation in Mountain View, San Francisco and Pittsburgh, United States. It pays $251k-$310k a year and Level rates it Builds AI ●●●●; you can [apply on Waymo](https://jobsbylevel.com/go/b15e0b04-21ce-4e07-ab04-65a672c66ef3?utm_medium=ai-agent).

AI Level 4, AI centrality 99 out of 100. Mountain View, CA, USA; San Francisco, CA, USA; Pittsburgh, PA, USA.

## Details

- Company: [Waymo](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/waymo)
- AI level: AI Level 4 (score 99 out of 100)
- Location: Mountain View, CA, USA; San Francisco, CA, USA; Pittsburgh, PA, USA
- Salary: $251k-$310k
- Posted: June 11, 2026
- Apply: https://jobsbylevel.com/go/b15e0b04-21ce-4e07-ab04-65a672c66ef3?utm_medium=ai-agent
- Free CV review for this job: https://jobsbylevel.com/cv-review?job=staff-machine-learning-engineer-driver-refinement-validation-at-waymo-6f7ff7

## Prepare for this job

The job page lists 4 likely interview questions for this offer, with a CV checklist: https://jobsbylevel.com/jobs/staff-machine-learning-engineer-driver-refinement-validation-at-waymo-6f7ff7

## Description

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. Driver Refinement and Validation’s (DRV) mission is to build upon the high-quality ML Driver developed by Driver Intelligence, refining its performance to improve autonomous driving in specific, complex real-world contexts and problem areas (e.g., Ride-Hailing contexts). It aims to ensure that the Waymo Driver always computes safe, compliant, comfortable, and useful plans. As an Engineer in DRV, you will bridge the gap between cutting-edge machine learning and real-world vehicle performance, engineering the validation and onboard systems that ensure the autonomous vehicle reliably executes intelligent and predictable maneuvers. You will: Develop next-generation, ML-powered systems that enhance the capabilities of the ML driver and accelerate the rapid scaling of Waymo’s business Fine-tune, adapt, and benchmark state-of-the-art generative models to improve autonomous vehicle perception, motion prediction, and trajectory planning Write high-quality, scalable, and thoroughly tested code to bring cutting-edge ML into production Partner with world-class engineers and product managers to deliver safe and smooth autonomous vehicle behaviors You have: MS in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or related technical field, or equivalent practical experience 8+ years of industry experience deploying, evaluating, and maintaining ML-based systems in real-world, production environments Proficient programming skills in Python and/or C++, coupled with strong analytical and debugging abilities Expertise with modern deep learning frameworks, such as JAX or PyTorch We prefer: Experience in deep learning, reinforcement learning, and ML systems Domain expertise in solving prediction, behaviors, motion planning, or related robotics problems ML post-training experience Prior industry experience (e.g. internships) in applied ML or software development Publications in top-tier conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ICRA, IROS, RSS, CoRL, ACL, or EMNLP) 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 $251,000 — $310,000 USD

Source: https://jobsbylevel.com/jobs/staff-machine-learning-engineer-driver-refinement-validation-at-waymo-6f7ff7

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