Senior Research Scientist, AI Foundations Recipes (AI)

TL;DR

Senior Research Scientist, AI Foundations Recipes (AI): Developing machine learning solutions for autonomous driving with an accent on data mixtures, training curricula, and model capabilities. Focus on designing global-scale pipelines, developing data-selection algorithms, and conducting large-scale empirical studies on scaling laws.

Location: Hybrid; must be based in Oxford, England

Salary: £123,000—£129,000 GBP

Company

Waymo is an autonomous driving technology company with the mission to be the world's most trusted driver.

What you will do

• Partner with foundation model training teams to determine optimal data mixtures, training curricula, and objectives.
• Design global-scale pipelines for dynamically updating and reusing data mixtures based on model behavior and real-world data.
• Develop and deploy principled data-selection algorithms for fine-tuning and reinforcement learning.
• Conduct large-scale empirical studies to link pre-training data composition to downstream performance.
• Collaborate with behavior, perception, and evaluation teams to measure the impact of foundation models on the Waymo Driver.

Requirements

• PhD in ML or related field in AI/CS, or MSc with a strong academic publication record.
• Strong statistical and machine learning knowledge.
• Proficiency in Python.
• 3+ years of experience with modern deep learning frameworks such as JAX, TensorFlow, or PyTorch.

Nice to have

• Proven track record of deploying ML models to production environments.
• Experience with generative models (LLMs/VLMs), reinforcement learning, imitation learning, transformers, or autoencoders.
• Experience in the autonomous driving domain.
• Proficiency in C++.

Culture & Benefits

• Participation in a discretionary annual bonus program.
• Equity incentive plan.
• Generous company benefits program.