Waymo Hiring 2027 Summer PhD Intern (ML Research)

Waymo is an autonomous driving technology company on a mission to be the world's most trusted driver. Starting 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 lost to traffic crashes. The Waymo Driver powers Waymo's fully autonomous ride-hail service and can be applied to a range of vehicle platforms and product use cases. It 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 subteam for this role will be:

The Predictive Planning team (PrePlan) develops and deploys state-of-the-art machine learning solutions that predict the future state of the world and plan the Waymo Driver's behavior. Our mission is to transform Waymo's unprecedented scale of driving data into robust, generalizable, and performant deep neural networks. These models enable the autonomous vehicle to navigate complex environments safely and efficiently.

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:

• Research, implement, and evaluate state-of-the-art generative models for planning and predictions using JAX
• Conduct machine learning model experiments
• Produce high-quality, thoroughly tested code
• Collaborate with research, product, and engineering teams to introduce new research concepts

You have:

• Currently pursuing a PhD degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or a related field
• Experience with deep learning or reinforcement learning
• Hands-on experience with modern deep learning libraries (e.g., TensorFlow, JAX, PyTorch) with basic programming skills (e.g., Python, C/C++)
• Strong analytical and debugging skills

We prefer:

• Publications in top-tier conferences such as ICML, NeurIPS, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ICLR, IROS, CoRL, ACL, or EMNLP
• Prior software development or research industry experience (including internships)

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 subteam for this role will be:

The Reasoning Platform team builds and maintains the foundational APIs, architecture, and frameworks that power all the Reasoning subteams at Waymo. We own the interfaces connecting reasoning logic to the rest of the Waymo Planner, both on and off the vehicle.

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:

• Develop robust and performant C++ autolabeler code to mine for useful events from everyday driving
• Label ground truth and evaluate autolabeler quality
• Experiment with different approaches and report on what works best

You have:

• Pursuing a Bachelor's in software engineering or a related field
• Strong C++ coding ability
• Solid understanding of fundamental algorithms and data structures
• Proficiency with software testing (unit testing, integration testing, regression testing)
• Comfortable working with data and designing metrics
• Ability to communicate and collaborate well. Experience working in teams

We prefer:

• Passion for the autonomous driving industry
• Experience with software for autonomous robots
• Good communication skills and eagerness to collaborate
• Understanding of version control systems
• Experience with developing in a Linux environment

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.