Data Scientist

About the position

Waymo is an autonomous driving technology company with the mission to be the most trusted driver. Since its start as the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, Waymo has focused on building the Waymo Driver—The World's Most Experienced Driver™—to improve access to mobility while saving thousands of lives now lost to traffic crashes. The Waymo Driver powers Waymo One, a fully autonomous ride-hailing service, and can also be applied to a range of vehicle platforms and product use cases. The Waymo Driver has provided over one million rider-only trips, enabled by its experience autonomously driving tens of millions of miles on public roads and tens of billions in simulation across 13+ U.S. states. Rigorous performance evaluation of the Waymo Driver is a critical part of scaling our ride hailing service and achieving Waymo’s audacious goals. Waymo data scientists work hand-in-hand with engineering teams at each stage of the software development cycle, employing statistical models and developing metrics and measurement frameworks to ensure that the Waymo Driver meets our strict standards for safety, compliance, and driving and service quality. Autonomous driving presents a new paradigm in data science: in addition to leveraging data collected on-road, we generate our own data using state-of-the-art simulation technology—resulting in denser signals and challenging new problems in estimation and experimental design.

Responsibilities

• Develop evaluation frameworks for autonomous vehicle performance, for large-scale ML models, and for the quality of simulation.
• Develop new metrics, interpret trends, and investigate anomalies in data from simulation and on-road driving.
• Develop novel statistical methods to handle unique aspects of AV data; e.g. rate estimation with rare events, combining real and synthetic data, etc.
• Frame and solve ambiguous problems, derive data-driven conclusions, and communicate findings to senior stakeholders.
• Collaborate with Product and Engineering partners developing the Waymo Driver and Waymo’s simulation software; facilitate deployment readiness decisions for both products.

Requirements

• Degree in a quantitative field (e.g. Statistics, Mathematics, Physics)
• 3+ years of industry experience solving data science problems or a PhD in a quantitative field
• Expertise using advanced statistical methods in an applied setting; familiarity with ML systems/models
• Demonstrated knowledge of Python/SQL/R data analysis libraries and packages.

Nice-to-haves

• PhD in a quantitative field
• Experience solving problems related to Autonomous Driving or Ride Hailing
• Experience in adjacent relevant areas like Advanced Machine Learning (Deep Learning and Diffusion models), Traffic Modeling, Safety Evaluation or Prediction.

Benefits

• Discretionary annual bonus program
• Equity incentive plan
• Generous Company benefits program