2027 Summer Intern, MS/PhD, Machine Learning, Driver Refinement Foundations

Waymo is an autonomous driving technology company with the mission to be the world's 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’s fully autonomous ride-hail service and can also be applied to a range of vehicle platforms and product use cases. The Waymo Driver has provided over ten million rider-only trips, enabled by its experience autonomously driving over 100 million miles on public roads and tens of billions in simulation across 15+ U.S. states.

Software Engineering builds the brains of Waymo's fully autonomous driving technology. Our software allows the Waymo Driver to perceive the world around it, make the right decision for every situation, and deliver people safely to their destinations. We think deeply and solve complex technical challenges in areas like robotics, perception, decision-making and deep learning, while collaborating with hardware and systems engineers. If you’re a software engineer or researcher who’s curious and passionate about Level 4 autonomous driving, we'd like to meet you. 

The team for this role will be:

Driver Refinement Foundations

Description:

The team is accountable for providing the common, consistent framework (and enabling expertise) for post-training and heuristic hill climbing across the entire Planner organization. We build fundamental platforms to assist Waymo engineers in delivering driving behavior improvements using data-driven and heuristic methods.

Waymo interns partner with leaders in the industry on projects that create impact to the company. We believe learning is a two-way street: applying your knowledge while providing you with opportunities to expand your skill-set. Interns are an important part of our culture and our recruiting pipeline. Join us at Waymo for a fun and rewarding internship!

You will:

  • Mine and curate dataset samples from large corpus of driving data

  • Leverage large language models and world foundation models for reasoning, decision making and multi-modality generation

  • Design and implement robust data generation pipelines for data generation

  • Design and evaluate experiments for model training

  • Designing robust data generation pipelines for model training

You have:

  • Currently enrolled in a graduate program (Master's or PhD) in Computer Science or a related technical field

  • You have strong problem solving and programming skills in Python and/or C++

  • Good understanding of Jax/Pytorch

  • Experience in model evaluation and understanding metrics

  • Experience in strong software engineering principles

We prefer:

  • Some understanding of SQL is preferred, not required

  • Previous Internship experience

  • PhD preferred

General Perks

  • Help solve challenging problems with a direct impact on the company

  • Competitive compensation packages with a housing/relocation bonus (if applicable)

  • Medical, dental, and vision insurance

  • Fun intern events and networking opportunities

Onsite Perks

  • Free breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks 

  • Free access to Google shuttles

  • Onsite gym

Note: This will be a hybrid onsite internship position. We will accept resumes on a rolling basis until the role is filled. To be in consideration for multiple roles, you will need to apply to each one individually - please apply to the top 3 roles you are interested in.

The expected hourly rate for this full-time position is listed below. Interns are also eligible to participate in the Company’s generous benefits programs, subject to eligibility requirements.

Hourly Masters Pay

$70—$70 USD

The expected hourly rate for this full-time position is listed below. Interns are also eligible to participate in the Company’s generous benefits programs, subject to eligibility requirements.

Hourly PhD Pay

$85—$85 USD

Summary

Interns mine and curate driving-data samples, leverage large language models and world foundation models, and design data generation pipelines and model-training experiments. Requires current enrollment in a Master's or PhD program in Computer Science or a related field, strong Python and/or C++ skills, and familiarity with Jax/Pytorch.

Responsibilities

Mine and curate dataset samples from large corpus of driving data; leverage LLMs and world foundation models for reasoning, decision making and multi-modality generation; design and implement robust data generation pipelines; design and evaluate experiments for model training

Qualifications

Currently enrolled in a graduate program (Master's or PhD) in Computer Science or a related technical field; strong problem solving and programming skills in Python and/or C++; good understanding of Jax/Pytorch; experience in model evaluation and understanding metrics; strong software engineering principles

Education requirements

Currently enrolled in a graduate program (Master's or PhD) in Computer Science or a related technical field

Experience requirements

Previous internship experience preferred; PhD preferred; some understanding of SQL preferred, not required

Benefits

Medical, dental, and vision insurance; housing/relocation bonus; free meals and snacks; onsite gym; Google shuttles