Machine Learning Engineer, Audio Perception

The Audio Perception team focuses on leveraging audio to provide sufficient scene understanding and driving behavior that are uniquely captured by audio. The team owns audio-related signals and supports applications across all product areas, improving key metrics like safety, rider comfort and cost. We strive to fulfill new product requests while preserving performance on existing applications as we rapidly scale to new cities.

In this hybrid role, you will report to a Technical Lead Manager.

You will:

• Support new product requests end-to-end, from problem definition to a solution that is integrated in the onboard driving system.
• Streamline the model development and evaluation stack for rapid adaptation to new tasks and data.
• Establish and maintain a sustainable model stack to facilitate Waymo’s scaling across multiple platforms and cities.

You have:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a similar discipline, or an equivalent amount of deep learning experience.
• 3+ years of experience in Machine Learning, with a strong focus on deep learning for perception tasks.
• Deep understanding of state-of-the-art ML techniques, especially those related to multi-class classification, regression, model adaptation and scarce data.
• Proficiency in at least one deep learning framework (e.g. TensorFlow, PyTorch, JAX).
• Proficiency in C++ and Python.

We prefer:

• Master’s degree or Ph.D in Computer Science or a similar discipline, or an equivalent amount of deep learning experience.
• Experience in audio modeling or digital signal processing.
• Familiarity with multi-modal systems and/or foundation models.
• Experience implementing infrastructure to support model development (e.g. data processing modules).
• Experience in optimizing ML models for on-device deployment and real-time performance.
• Background in autonomous driving or robotics.
• Familiarity with SQL.