---
title: 'Software Quality Operations Specialist at Waymo'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/software-quality-operations-specialist-waymo-mountain-view-ca-c8b5jap8qdzw'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-16'
---

# Software Quality Operations Specialist at Waymo

- **Company:** Waymo
- **Location:** Mountain View CA, United States / San Francisco CA, United States
- **Compensation:** $130k–$160k
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2025-12-17
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-16
- **Apply:** https://careers.withwaymo.com/jobs?gh_jid=7458098

## 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 ensuring the safety, reliability, and quality of the Waymo Driver. 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.

Waymo is experiencing unprecedented growth, rapidly expanding into new cities and launching new vehicle platforms. SWQOps, particularly our Technical Specialists, are critical to this expansion, enabling us to scale safely and efficiently.

Why this team is Essential to Waymo's Success:

In this role 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.
- 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. Perform meta-quality checks, validate the integrity of vendor work, and provide feedback to improve both human and model performance.
- Act as the subject matter expert for our Software Quality Operations, working closely with stakeholders, program leads, and vendor teams to ensure seamless adoption and maximum impact of AI/ML advancements in our quality processes. Be the trusted source for creating and updating technical policies, guidelines, and standard operating procedures for new scopes, platforms, and driving signals
- 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.
- 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.

You have:

- BS/BA degree or 4 years of relevant work experience in AV Software Quality Operations
- 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.
- Must have the ability to provide occasional on-call availability for evenings, weekends, and holidays, as well as the flexibility to attend meetings outside of standard hours to collaborate with our global team.

We prefer:

- Demonstrated strong execution with ability to drive outcomes.
- Experience working with offshore teams / multiple local operations hubs.
- 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.

In accordance with Washington state law, we are highlighting our comprehensive benefits package, which is available to all eligible US based employees. Benefits for this role include:

- Health, dental, vision, life, disability insurance
- Retirement Benefits: 401(k) with company match
- Paid Time Off: 20 days of vacation per year, accruing at a rate of 6.15 hours per pay period for the first five years of employment
- Sick Time: 40 hours/year (statutory, where applicable); 5 days/event (discretionary)
- Maternity Leave (Short-Term Disability + Baby Bonding): 28-30 weeks
- Baby Bonding Leave: 18 weeks
- Holidays: 13 paid days per year

(Remote jobs only - Please note that Waymo may not be able to employ remotely in all locations. Please speak with your recruiter about your preferred location for remote work when you begin the interview process.))

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.

Salary Range $130,000—$160,000 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

- [Strategy & BizOps Lead, Germany](https://feeny.ai/job/strategy-bizops-lead-germany-waymo-munich-7ms9y0z39x9c) — Munich, Germany
- [Head of Technical Services](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-technical-services-waymo-mountain-view-8pgtsfw4mwfe) — Mountain View, CA
- [Staff Android Engineer, In-Car Experience](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-android-engineer-in-car-experience-waymo-mountain-view-c0j6szr8rxa6) — Mountain View, CA / San Francisco, CA
- [2027 Summer Intern, MBA, Salesforce Product Owner](https://feeny.ai/job/2027-summer-intern-mba-salesforce-product-owner-waymo-los-angeles-california-psfm4b77mwj6) — Los Angeles California, United States
- [Lead Diagnostic Technician](https://feeny.ai/job/lead-diagnostic-technician-waymo-munich-39y58p69jn54) — Munich, Germany
- [Japan Ops Activation & Compliance](https://feeny.ai/job/japan-ops-activation-compliance-waymo-tokyo-tf8knn77306c) — Tokyo, Japan
- [Technical Lead Manager, Pullover Maneuvers](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-lead-manager-pullover-maneuvers-waymo-mountain-view-rjgzygywt0v7) — Mountain View, CA / San Francisco, CA
- [2027 Summer Intern, MBA, Strategic Finance](https://feeny.ai/job/2027-summer-intern-mba-strategic-finance-waymo-san-francisco-california-fggjr7pzzcqs) — San Francisco California, United States
- [2027 Summer Intern, BS/MS, Software Engineering, Commercialization](https://feeny.ai/job/2027-summer-intern-bs-ms-software-engineering-commercialization-waymo-mountain-tnr7j88a87f6) — Mountain View California, United States / San Francisco California, United States
- [Supply Operations Manager - San Francisco](https://feeny.ai/job/supply-operations-manager-san-francisco-waymo-san-francisco-v4vek2q1d720) — San Francisco, CA