---
title: '2027 Summer Intern, PhD, Machine Learning - Generative World Models & Controllable Simulation at Waymo'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/2027-summer-intern-phd-machine-learning-generative-world-models-controllable-6q509p8ars8h'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-11'
---

# 2027 Summer Intern, PhD, Machine Learning - Generative World Models & Controllable Simulation at Waymo

- **Company:** Waymo
- **Location:** Mountain View, CA
- **Compensation:** $85/hr
- **Posted:** 2026-11-06
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-11
- **Apply:** https://careers.withwaymo.com/jobs?gh_jid=8351210

## 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.

Software Engineering builds the brains of Waymo's fully autonomous driving technology. Our software allows the Waymo Driver to perceive the world around it, make the right decision for every situation, and deliver people safely to their destinations. We think deeply and solve complex technical challenges in areas like robotics, perception, decision-making and deep learning, while collaborating with hardware and systems engineers. If you’re a software engineer or researcher who’s curious and passionate about Level 4 autonomous driving, we'd like to meet you.

Waymo interns partner with leaders in the industry on projects that create impact to the company. We believe learning is a two-way street: applying your knowledge while providing you with opportunities to expand your skill-set. Interns are an important part of our culture and our recruiting pipeline. Join us at Waymo for a fun and rewarding internship!

You will:

- Design, implement, and scale controllable generation and test-time compute algorithms, multimodal conditioning, and critic-guided flow/diffusion steering—for foundation world models.
- Investigate multimodal sensor + semantic latent conditioning, and representation alignment to advance toward holistic world simulation.
- Leverage learned realism critics and agentic autoresearch workflows on large-scale TPU clusters to evaluate closed-loop interactive realism, long-tail scenario synthesis, and multimodal consistency.
- Write clean, modular, and well-tested JAX code in core simulation and world-modeling codebases, collaborating closely with researchers across Sim Realism, Foundation Models, and Closed-Loop Training teams.

You have:

- Currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or a related technical field, with an anticipated graduation date between December 2027 and August 2028 (returning to a degree program for at least one academic term after the internship).
- Core Implementation Fluency (Mandatory): Strong tensor implementation and debugging skills in Python and JAX/Flax or PyTorch, with hands-on experience training and modifying modern neural architectures (such as Transformers, Diffusion/Flow-Matching models, or deep RL/critic networks).
- Deep Research Expertise in Either: (a) Controllable Generative World / Sequence Modeling & Inference-Time Scaling (hands-on research experience in continuous flow matching / Rectified Flows, score-based diffusion guidance/steering, test-time compute / SMC, or parameter-efficient finetuning) OR (b) Multimodal Spatiotemporal Representation Learning & Closed-Loop Simulation (hands-on research experience in 4D/video tokenization, latent dynamics alignment such as REPA/DINO alignment, inverse RL / adversarial discriminators, or multi-agent trajectory modeling), with working familiarity in the other.

We prefer:

- First-author publications at top-tier machine learning, computer vision, or robotics venues (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ECCV, CoRL, RSS, ICRA, or equivalent venues) in generative world models, flow/diffusion steering, controllable generation, or autonomous driving simulation.
- Experience with multi-agent closed-loop simulation, counterfactual/adversarial traffic generation, or Sim2Real discriminator/critic stabilization (e.g., Waymax, WOMD, NuPlan, MGAIL, or reward-hacking mitigation).
- Experience profiling and scaling distributed training and inference workloads on TPUs or multi-node GPUs (such as XLA compilation, vectorized batched rollouts, and memory optimization) and interest in external conference publication on Waymax/WOMD.

Note: This will be a hybrid onsite internship position. We will accept resumes on a rolling basis until the role is filled. To be in consideration for multiple roles, you will need to apply to each one individually - please apply to the top 3 roles you are interested in. The expected hourly rate for this full-time position is listed below. Interns are also eligible to participate in the Company’s generous benefits programs, subject to eligibility requirements.

Hourly PhD Pay $85—$85 USD

## About Waymo

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Waymo is an autonomous driving technology company that develops and operates the Waymo Driver, a self-driving system used for ride-hailing and trucking, with a mission to be the world’s most trusted driver.
- **Entity Type**: Private (subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google)
- **Headquarters**: Mountain View, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2009 (as the Google self-driving car project); became an independent company under Alphabet in 2016
- **Founders**: The project was initiated by Sebastian Thrun (Google X), with key early contributions from Anthony Levandowski and others. Current leadership is Co-CEOs Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov, and Chief Safety Officer Mauricio Peña.

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Autonomous vehicles, self-driving technology, ride-hailing, autonomous trucking, mobility-as-a-service
- **Target customers**: B2C (riders via Waymo One), B2B (fleet operators, logistics companies, and partners), and enterprise (autonomous trucking and delivery)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: “To be the world’s most trusted driver.” Waymo aims to save lives, drive inclusive mobility, and improve the state of the planet by making transportation safer, more accessible, and sustainable.

## Products & Services
- **Waymo One**: The world’s first commercial autonomous ride-hailing service. Offers fully driverless rides to the public in Metro Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. The fleet is now all-electric (Jaguar I-PACE).
- **Waymo Via**: Autonomous trucking and logistics service for freight movement, operating with partners to move goods on highways.
- **Waymo Driver**: The company’s core autonomous driving system (software + hardware stack). It is designed to be integrated into various vehicle platforms for ride-hailing, trucking, and delivery.
- **Waymo Open Dataset**: A publicly available dataset of autonomous driving sensor data, provided to researchers to accelerate breakthroughs in the field.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed (as a private subsidiary of Alphabet). Alphabet’s market cap is ~$2 trillion (as of mid-2025). Waymo is considered Alphabet’s most valuable “Other Bet.”
- **Key Metric**: Over 20 million rider-only (fully autonomous) rides served as of early 2025. 94% fewer serious injury crashes compared to human drivers over the same distance in operating cities.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Alphabet Inc. (parent company). Partners include Jaguar Land Rover (vehicle supply), Daimler Trucks (trucking), and various fleet operators and delivery services.
- **Growth Signals**: Rapid geographic expansion (largest fully autonomous service area in the world at 180 sq miles in Phoenix); transition to an all-electric fleet; expansion into Los Angeles and San Francisco; growing public trust (93% rider satisfaction rate); continuous hiring across engineering, operations, and AI.

## Competitive Advantages
- **First-mover & scale**: Waymo is the only company operating a fully autonomous, commercial, paid ride-hailing service across multiple major US cities, with millions of real-world miles driven without a human safety driver.
- **Deep Alphabet backing**: Access to vast resources, AI talent (DeepMind/Google Brain), and infrastructure (Google Maps, Cloud, AI chips).
- **Safety track record**: Publicly released data showing a 82-94% reduction in injury-causing crashes compared to human drivers, building regulatory and public trust.
- **Full-stack approach**: In-house development of hardware (LIDAR, cameras, radar), software (perception, planning, simulation), and operations (fleet management, rider experience).

## Strategic Focus
- **Scaling safely**: Expanding service areas (adding more cities and suburbs) while maintaining a strong safety record.
- **All-electric fleet**: Transitioning the entire Waymo One fleet to zero-emission vehicles (Jaguar I-PACE) to align with sustainability goals.
- **Trucking & logistics**: Growing Waymo Via to capture the massive autonomous trucking market, partnering with OEMs and shippers.
- **AI & simulation**: Using advanced AI (including large models and generative AI) to improve the Waymo Driver’s decision-making and simulation-based validation.
- **Accessibility & inclusive mobility**: Designing for riders with disabilities, older adults, and underserved communities to ensure transportation is available to all.

## Why Work Here
- **Impact**: Work on technology that directly saves lives (1.4M traffic deaths globally each year) and reshapes the future of transportation.
- **Culture**: Waymo describes itself as a place for “ambitious thinkers and relentless problem solvers” with a deep respect for getting every detail right. Values include safety, innovation, and responsibility.
- **Teams**: Opportunities across Software Engineering, Hardware Engineering, AI Foundations, Product & Design, Operations & Supply Chain, Safety, Policy, and General & Administrative roles.
- **Internships**: Strong early-career program with internships for Bachelors, Masters, MBA, and PhD candidates, often leading to full-time offers.
- **Hiring process**: Transparent and structured. Includes an initial recruiter screen, 1-2 phone/video interviews, and a virtual onsite (up to 5 interviews). Emphasizes problem-solving, collaboration, and real-time thinking. AI tools are not permitted during technical assessments to ensure fair evaluation.
- **Remote/hybrid policy**: The careers page lists both on-site and remote roles, with most engineering and operations roles based in Mountain View, San Francisco, or other US locations.
- **Benefits**: Top-notch benefits, unique learning opportunities, thoughtful community engagement, and meaningful gatherings. Specific perks are not detailed publicly but are described as comprehensive.

## Sources
1. [Waymo.com](https://waymo.com/) – Official company website (mission, history, safety data)
2. [Waymo About Page](https://waymo.com/about/) – Company history, leadership, and milestones
3. [Waymo Careers Page](https://careers.withwaymo.com/) – Culture, teams, hiring process, benefits
4. [Waymo Open Roles](https://careers.withwaymo.com/jobs/search) – Current job listings and departments
5. [Waymo How We Hire](https://careers.withwaymo.com/how-we-hire) – Interview process, tips, and accessibility

## Other roles at Waymo

- [Singapore Market Operations Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/singapore-market-operations-lead-waymo-singapore-qssya52e4scj) — Singapore
- [Executive Business Partner](https://feeny.ai/job/executive-business-partner-waymo-mountain-view-sm9yxcmf8wqw) — Mountain View, CA
- [Emergency Services Liaison, Singapore](https://feeny.ai/job/emergency-services-liaison-singapore-waymo-singapore-d65ah8jmjn6h) — Singapore
- [Senior Product Manager, Fleet Resilience](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-product-manager-fleet-resilience-waymo-mountain-view-dn4qtj7mskf5) — Mountain View, CA / San Francisco, CA
- [Utilities Specialist, Europe](https://feeny.ai/job/utilities-specialist-europe-waymo-london-26d2jktbn2n8) — London, United Kingdom
- [Legal Counsel - Singapore](https://feeny.ai/job/legal-counsel-singapore-waymo-singapore-gjahgxe47ghv) — Singapore
- [Staff Software Technical Program Manager, OEM Software](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-technical-program-manager-oem-software-waymo-mountain-view-wfa1ncsrghhz) — Mountain View, CA / San Francisco, CA
- [Technical Program Manager, Hardware Modules](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-program-manager-hardware-modules-waymo-mountain-view-10efjy22trww) — Mountain View, CA / San Francisco, CA
- [PreConstruction Manager, Europe](https://feeny.ai/job/preconstruction-manager-europe-waymo-london-ns1vvzvhkwm9) — London, United Kingdom
- [Indirect Procurement Category Manager | 間接購買カテゴリマネージャ](https://feeny.ai/job/indirect-procurement-category-manager-waymo-tokyo-4ps2svgajnnm) — Tokyo, Japan