Technical Lead Manager, Perception, Vehicle Understanding

Waymo|06 Jan 2026

fulltimeonsite

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Before you apply

Listed location: Mountain View, CA, USA; San Francisco, CA, USA

Work arrangement: onsite. A remote label does not confirm worldwide eligibility or visa sponsorship.

Read the employer’s description for qualifications, compensation and work eligibility. Confirm the position is still open on the application page.

Job description supplied by Waymo; category and skill labels may be inferred. How our listings work · Report a problem

Job Description

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.

The Semantics Understanding team is tackling the "last 1%" of autonomous driving perception. In this role, you will own the production modules related to Vehicle Understanding for the Waymo Driver. This area includes vehicles’ fine-grained classification (e.g., emergency, railed, construction, towing), states (e.g., warning, temporal blockage, active loading/unloading), and intents (e.g., lane-changes, stalled/slow, double-parking, unparking). Being on the critical path of Waymo’s domestic/international expansion, you will drive immediate impact and the 0-to-1 changes that push boundaries of the Waymo Driver’s generalizability.

In this hybrid role, you will report to our Senior Staff TLM of Semantics Understanding.

You Will:

Lead a team responsible for a key production area to scale Waymo's business
Develop a strong collaborative relationship with upstream and downstream teams to facilitate the end-to-end solutions for the corresponding product domains
Exercise technical leadership by pushing the boundaries of onboard/offboard generalizability, e.g., by leveraging onboard/offboard multi-modal foundational models, large-scale 3rd party data, and partner teams in Research, Oracles, and Simulation.
Manage a team (~10) with diverse skills including engineering, modeling, ML infrastructure, of senior and junior SWEs, foster an inclusive culture for sustained team growth, and hiring world-class talents.
Collaborate with Platform/Infra partners to optimize the team’s key pipelines (e.g., data, training, evaluation, onboard) for high performance, efficiency, and reliability.
Develop the execution strategies that balance short-term and long-term priorities. Drive process and clarify R&Rs for cross-organizational alignments.

You Have:

BS/MS in Computer Science, Machine Learning or related disciplines
7+ years of experience in deep learning systems, specifically in computer vision, or multi-modal perception
3+ years of experience managing medium-sized (10+ people) production teams in complex, fast-paced environments with a track record in developing team culture and growing people.
Experience in collaborating with technical, research and business stakeholders to drive impactful solutions.

We Prefer:

PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning or related disciplines
Publications in top CV conferences (NeurIPS, CVPR, ICCV, etc.)
Experience in the autonomous vehicles industry

The expected base salary range for this full-time position across US locations is listed below. Actual starting pay will be based on job-related factors, including exact work location, experience, relevant training and education, and skill level. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for the role location or, if the role can be performed remote, the specific salary range for your preferred location, during the hiring process.

Waymo employees are also eligible to participate in Waymo’s discretionary annual bonus program, equity incentive plan, and generous Company benefits program, subject to eligibility requirements.

Salary Range

$251,000—$310,000 USD

Skills mentioned

Computer Vision

Frequently asked questions

Is the Technical Lead Manager, Perception, Vehicle Understanding position at Waymo remote?

The Technical Lead Manager, Perception, Vehicle Understanding role at Waymo does not have a confirmed remote arrangement in our data. Check the employer description for its work location.

What type of employment is the Technical Lead Manager, Perception, Vehicle Understanding role?

Waymo is hiring for a full-time Technical Lead Manager, Perception, Vehicle Understanding position.

Which skills are mentioned for the Technical Lead Manager, Perception, Vehicle Understanding job at Waymo?

Detected skill labels include Computer Vision. Check the employer description to distinguish required skills from preferred experience.

How do I apply for the Technical Lead Manager, Perception, Vehicle Understanding position at Waymo?

You can apply for the Technical Lead Manager, Perception, Vehicle Understanding role directly through Waymo's official application link provided on this page.