Technical Lead Manager, Route & Motion Generation (Autonomous Driving)

TL;DR

Technical Lead Manager, Route & Motion Generation (Autonomous Driving): Building onboard motion-planning systems and evaluation frameworks for a Level 4 autonomous driving platform with an accent on low-speed maneuvering, driving behavior analysis, and foundational planning infrastructure. Focus on solving long-tail driving scenarios, investigating root causes from vehicle logs, and mentoring engineers while advancing production autonomy capabilities.

Location: Onsite or hybrid in Mountain View or San Francisco, California, United States.

Salary: $238,000–$302,000 USD base salary, plus discretionary annual bonus, equity incentives, and company benefits.

Company

Waymo develops autonomous driving technology and operates a fully autonomous ride-hail service powered by the Waymo Driver.

What you will do

• Provide technical leadership for onboard motion-planning systems that improve low-speed maneuvering.
• Build evaluation capabilities to measure and understand on-road driving performance.
• Investigate driving behavior issues using vehicle logs and identify root causes.
• Develop foundational frameworks that advance the Waymo Driver’s capabilities.
• Solve challenging long-tail driving scenarios in collaboration with software, hardware, and systems teams.
• Mentor junior engineers and contribute to cross-team technical direction.

Requirements

• MS or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or a related technical field, or 4+ years of equivalent practical experience.
• Strong software engineering experience with C++ and robust, efficient code.
• Ability to collaborate within and across teams.
• At least 1 year of management experience with 5 or more direct reports.
• Experience working with complex software systems and autonomous-driving or robotics challenges.

Nice to have

• Experience with autonomous vehicles or robotics.
• Experience deploying machine-learning models in production systems.
• Experience with graph search, optimization, or path-planning algorithms.
• 8+ years of software engineering experience in complex systems.
• Proficiency in Python and SQL.

Culture & Benefits

• Work on Level 4 autonomous driving technology focused on improving mobility and road safety.
• Collaborate with software, research, hardware, and systems engineering teams.
• Eligible employees may participate in an annual bonus program and equity incentive plan.
• Company benefits are available subject to eligibility requirements.