---
title: 'Software Quality Operations Specialist at Waymo'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/software-quality-operations-specialist-waymo-london-3gmyc1gqcff2'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-09'
---

# Software Quality Operations Specialist at Waymo

- **Company:** Waymo
- **Location:** London, United Kingdom
- **Compensation:** £97k–£105k
- **Posted:** 2026-02-09
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09
- **Apply:** https://careers.withwaymo.com/jobs?gh_jid=7458393

## 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.

The Software Quality Operations (SWQOps) team is at the heart of enabling safe and successful scale-up into new international markets and incubating mission-critical, high-impact workflows. Our mission is to build an adaptable and scalable operation, increasingly powered by AI, to deliver the crucial insights necessary to confidently deploy and grow Waymo's autonomous vehicle service.

Why This Team is Essential to Waymo's Success:

Waymo is undergoing unprecedented growth, rapidly expanding into new cities (targeting ~20 new cities by EOY 2026, including international expansion to London and Tokyo) and launching new vehicle platforms. SWQOps, especially our Technical Specialists, plays a critical role in this expansion, making it possible to scale safely and efficiently. We are on the front lines of:

- International RO & New Market Readiness: Concerted effort to update triage policy, standing Voice of Customer in new countries. Through meticulous triage of driving events, issue discovery, and continuous field monitoring, SWQOps provides early warnings and critical insights to Product and Data Science partners.
- Supporting the development of a single, automated, end-to-end machine learning flywheel for the entire Waymo Driver. A successful flywheel will be the core engine for scaling our technology, enabling faster international expansion, quicker remediation of driving issues, and a significant reduction in the engineering effort required to maintain and improve the driver.
- Driving Engineering Velocity: By handling the vital work of performance evaluation, issue deep-dives, and data set curation, SWQOps collaborates heavily and allows Waymo's Engineering, SysEng, Simulation, and Data Science teams to focus on their core tasks of developing and improving the Waymo Driver.
- Workflow Incubation & Development: Incubating high-impact workflows and ensuring readiness for automation and long-term operational excellence.

You will:

- Partner with Engineering to design, test, and deploy cutting-edge Machine Learning (ML) and Generative AI (Gen-AI) models and tools to drive step-change improvements in issue discovery & detection, triage efficiency, and quality assurance. Provides technical requirements to Engineering for tooling that supports new market workflows (e.g., localization of ML/Gen-AI models, new data pipelines).
- Leverage AI-powered insights and traditional triage signals to proactively identify emerging on-road issue trends, new risk scenarios, and edge cases. Develop and refine data-driven strategies for issue discovery and monitoring, enhanced by ML model outputs
- Serve as the key link between AI/ML development and operational execution. Define and document new policies, guidelines, and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) that integrate AI tools and insights into daily vendor workflows.
- Design and implement robust quality control processes for both human and AI-generated outputs. Designs and validates new triage policies, SOPs, and quality control processes specifically for London/Tokyo driving rules and data signals.
- Act as the Subject Matter Expert for technical policies and guidelines in the new market. Consult with local/international stakeholders to ensure seamless adoption of technical policies.
- Provide technical leadership and consultation to stakeholders to enhance our workflows and quality. You'll be at the forefront of identifying and escalating issues with our tools, providing technical requirements to engineering, and driving user testing to support the development and deployment of new tooling features.

You have:

- BS/BA degree or 8+ years of relevant work experience in AV Software Quality Operations
- Strong understanding of driving rules and regulations in European (London) metropolitan areas.
- Increased competency in supporting all phases of the machine learning development lifecycle, from data preparation and training to validation, deployment, and continuous monitoring.
- Experience with ML testing and validation, including dataset quality assurance, bias detection, edge-case scenario testing, and performance evaluation using statistical metrics.
- Ability to quickly learn and implement new concepts and utilize proprietary tools. Strong understanding of driving rules and regulations.
- A proven ability to work in a fast-paced, high-stress environment while maintaining good judgment
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills to effectively collaborate with a wide range of individuals in a diverse and dynamic work environment

We prefer:

- Demonstrated strong execution with ability to drive outcomes
- Demonstrated experience working with international and/or offshore vendor teams to drive global process standardization and quality
- Basic SQL querying
- Competency in LLM / transformer models, and / or ML for robotics domain experience
- A greater focus on using your subject matter expertise for results analysis and direct customer consultation in the development of new and improved solutions
- Self-motivated with basic skills in task planning and time management
- Experience with project management or program management in a global, distributed environment

The expected base salary range for this full-time position 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.  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.

Salary Range £97,000—£105,000 GBP

## 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

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