Technical Program Manager, Perception

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.

Waymo’s Technical Program Managers are accountable for Waymo’s roadmap execution by providing thoughtful cross-functional planning, clarity, and proactive risk management. In the face of complex technical and operational challenges with no established playbooks to follow, we act with thoughtful urgency, driving conversations, discussions, and outcomes. Our team partners closely with every function of Waymo to structure, own and drive work towards real-world deployments of the Waymo Driver across platforms and geographies.

In this role, you will report to a Director of Technical Program Management.

You will:

• Manage Perception programs, which accept sensor input to produce object detections for the Onboard software stack
• Evolve new ML models to scale the Waymo driver for multiple cities and platforms
• Demonstrate fundamental technical program management skills, including delivering features on milestones, managing risk, defining critical paths, and managing staffing requests
• Collaborate with technical and product leads to define timelines and roadmaps, and establish / improve onboard development workflows and processes
• Proactively identify and reduce business-critical risks and dependencies
• Keep stakeholders informed and aligned; represent programs to senior leadership and escalate when needed to remove blockers

You have:

• 5+ years of experience managing highly complex cross-functional programs
• Technical judgment and ability to collaborate with engineering teams
• Break a problem down, be able to triage events to understand root causes
• Driving teams to meet schedule and feature complete target
• Flexibility and react well to change, including handling escalations and pivoting upon priority changes

We prefer:

• Previous background in Software Engineering
• Robotics, ML modeling, or Data Science experience – especially ML modeling
• Expertise in scaling processes within complex, growing areas

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.