Research Scientist, RL for Autonomous Planning & World Modeling
Waymo · Mountain View, CA, USA; San Francisco, CA, USA; Kirkland, WA, USA; New York City, NY, USA
Posted about 3 months ago
or apply directly on Waymo's site. We never take the application ourselves.
Is this posting real?
- This role has been open
- 76 days Waymo's roles stay open a median of 103 days
- Reposted
- No
- Salary listed
- No 0% of Waymo's roles list one
- Ghost-job risk at Waymo
- high 353 stale, 9 reposted of 353 open
- Hiring momentum
- 66 roles opened in the last 90 days ↓ down vs. the prior 90 days
- Last confirmed on the employer's board
- 2026-11-14
Measured from postings appearing on and disappearing from Waymo's own greenhouse board since 2026-08-03. Full hiring picture for Waymo.
About this role
As a Research Scientist in the AI Foundations team at Waymo, you will engage in cutting-edge research and development of reinforcement learning (RL) techniques for autonomous vehicle trajectory planning. Your role involves integrating emerging AI research into Waymo's RL infrastructure, conducting evaluations, and collaborating with various engineering and research teams to enhance collective knowledge and practices in the field.
- benefits
- 4/5
- freshness
- 4/5
- career value
- 5/5
- role clarity
- 4/5
- pay transparency
- 0/5
Scored from the posting itself — how clearly the role is described, how much it says about pay and benefits, and how recently it was listed. Not a judgement of Waymo as an employer.
What you need
- PhD or Masters in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or a similar technical field
- 3+ years of industry or post-doc research experience in Reinforcement Learning or Foundation Models
- Demonstration of original contributions to the field through high-impact publications
- Proficiency in implementing model training flows in a scalable, distributed and performant manner
- Willingness to work with complexity of globally distributed inference infrastructure
Nice to have
- PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or Robotics with a research focus on Reinforcement Learning, Foundation Models, or Multi-Modal learning
- Extensive experience designing and deploying Reinforcement Learning infrastructure
- A consistent history of original contributions to the AI community
- Experience with large scale training infrastructure and techniques for inference with large models
What you get
- Health, dental, vision, life, disability insurance
- 401(k) with company match
- 20 days of vacation per year
- 40 hours/year sick time
- Maternity Leave (Short-Term Disability + Baby Bonding): 28-30 weeks
- Baby Bonding Leave: 18 weeks
Worth weighing
- No specific mention of remote work availability in all locations; check with recruiter
- Salary range provided but actual pay depends on various factors and is not fixed
Summarised from Waymo's posting. Read the full original.
Listed by Waymo on their greenhouse job board, last confirmed open on 2026-11-14. PitchMeAI is not the employer.
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