Technical Lead Manager, Perception (AI)

TL;DR

Technical Lead Manager, Perception (Computer Vision/AI): Leading the production modules for Vehicle Understanding to improve autonomous driving perception with an accent on fine-grained classification, states, and intents of vehicles. Focus on leveraging multi-modal foundational models and optimizing high-performance pipelines for domestic and international expansion.

Location: Hybrid; must be based in Mountain View or San Francisco, California

Salary: $251,000—$310,000 USD

Company

Waymo is an autonomous driving technology company developing the Waymo Driver to improve global mobility and road safety.

What you will do

• Lead a team of approximately 10 engineers and ML researchers responsible for critical vehicle understanding production modules.
• Drive end-to-end solutions for vehicle classification, state detection, and intent prediction.
• Exercise technical leadership by implementing multi-modal foundational models and utilizing large-scale 3rd party data.
• Collaborate with Platform and Infrastructure partners to optimize training, evaluation, and onboard pipelines for reliability and efficiency.
• Develop execution strategies that balance short-term deliverables with long-term architectural goals.
• Foster an inclusive team culture and lead the hiring of world-class technical talent.

Requirements

• BS/MS in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related discipline.
• 7+ years of experience in deep learning systems, specifically within computer vision or multi-modal perception.
• 3+ years of experience managing production teams of 10+ people in fast-paced environments.
• Proven track record of collaborating with technical, research, and business stakeholders to drive impactful solutions.

Nice to have

• PhD in Computer Science or Machine Learning.
• Publications in top-tier computer vision conferences such as NeurIPS, CVPR, or ICCV.
• Previous experience within the autonomous vehicles industry.

Culture & Benefits

• Competitive base salary with a discretionary annual bonus program.
• Equity incentive plan.
• Comprehensive company benefits program.
• Opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI that scales a real-world autonomous ride-hailing service.