The mission of the Waymo Applied Research team is to develop machine learning solutions addressing open problems in autonomous driving, towards the goal of the safely operating Waymo vehicles in dozens of cities and under all driving conditions. As part of our work, we also initiate and foster collaborations with other research teams in Alphabet.

In this role you'll:

• Lead and manage a team to build large-scale perception foundation models, powering many offboard and onboard applications for the Waymo Driver
• Set the technical direction for the team, develop the execution strategies, and align individual efforts with the overall strategies
• Develop a collaborative relationship with cross-functional teams across Waymo, including perception, simulation, and ML infrastructure
• Establish an inclusive culture for the team, enabling research innovations and delivering impactful results

At a minimum we'd like you to have:

• 2+ years of experience managing medium-size teams
• Track record in developing team culture and growing people
• 6+ years experience in deep learning research and productionisation

It's preferred if you have:

• Strong background in perception related domains, such as object detection, Transformer modeling, model scaling, self-supervised learning
• Good knowledge of LLM/VLM