Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer, LLM/VLM Model Architecture & Optimization
Waymo · Mountain View, CA, USA; San Francisco, CA, 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
- 80 days Waymo's roles stay open a median of 81 days
- Reposted
- No
- Salary listed
- No 0% of Waymo's roles list one
- Ghost-job risk at Waymo
- high 348 stale, 9 reposted of 353 open
- Hiring momentum
- 490 roles opened in the last 90 days ↑ up vs. the prior 90 days
- Last confirmed on the employer's board
- 2026-10-23
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
In this role, you will design and optimize VLM/LLM model architectures for autonomous driving applications, ensuring alignment with hardware constraints. You will collaborate with various teams to deliver end-to-end solutions and improve model performance for on-device use cases. Your work will involve leveraging large-scale real-world data to enhance the Waymo Driver's perception capabilities.
- benefits
- 2/5
- freshness
- 1/5
- career value
- 4/5
- 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
- 7+ years of experience in Machine Learning, with a focus on large-scale model development (LLM, VLM, or similar foundation models)
- Proven expertise in low-latency on-device inference techniques and a deep understanding of hardware acceleration
- Extensive experience with deep learning frameworks (e.g. PyTorch, JAX) and large-scale model training
- A track record of operating effectively under ambiguity, setting direction amid rapidly evolving research and technical constraints
- Experience applying large language models or foundation models in complex, safety-critical domains (e.g., autonomy, robotics, or other high-reliability systems)
- Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
Nice to have
- Familiarity with large-scale data curation and quality assurance processes for multimodal datasets
- Background in autonomous vehicle perception, motion planning, or decision-making systems
- Publications in top-tier machine learning or computer vision conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV)
- PhD in a relevant field
What you get
- Discretionary annual bonus program
- Equity incentive plan
- Generous Company benefits program
Worth weighing
- No specific details on the company's culture or team dynamics are provided
- The role involves working with complex, safety-critical systems which may present unique challenges
- Salary range is provided, but actual pay depends on various factors and may vary significantly
Summarised from Waymo's posting. Read the full original.
Listed by Waymo on their greenhouse job board, last confirmed open on 2026-10-23. PitchMeAI is not the employer.
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