Senior Research Scientist, AI Foundations Recipes

Waymo's AI Foundations team is seeking a Senior Research Scientist to advance machine learning for autonomous driving. This role focuses on optimizing foundation model training through data mixture design, curation pipelines, and principled data-selection algorithms, bridging pre-training data composition to downstream performance. The position involves large-scale empirical studies and close collaboration with perception, behavior, and evaluation teams.

• Partner with foundation model training teams to determine optimal data mixtures, training curricula, objectives, and other design choices that shape model capabilities.
• Design global-scale pipelines for dynamically updating and reusing data mixtures as model behavior evolves and real-world datasets are continually ingested.
• Develop and deploy principled data-selection algorithms (e.g., influence estimation, proxy models, gradient similarity search) for fine-tuning and RL.
• Run large-scale empirical studies linking pre-training data composition to downstream post-training performance.
• Collaborate closely with behavior, perception, and evaluation teams to test foundation models and measure their impact on the Waymo Driver.

• PhD in ML or related AI/CS field, or MSc with a strong academic publication record.
• Strong statistical and machine learning knowledge.
• Proficiency in Python.