---
title: 'Staff Data Scientist at Waymo'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-data-scientist-waymo-mountain-view-sm8pqda8yzgs'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-09'
---

# Staff Data Scientist at Waymo

- **Company:** Waymo
- **Location:** Mountain View, CA / San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $238k–$302k
- **Posted:** 2025-12-19
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09
- **Apply:** https://careers.withwaymo.com/jobs?gh_jid=7458013

## 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.

Rigorous behavioral evaluation of the Waymo Driver is a critical part of scaling our ride hailing service and achieving Waymo’s ambitious goals. In this role, you will lead key initiatives for measuring the quality and trustworthiness of the behavior evaluation portfolio at Waymo, continuously identify and drive opportunities for improving the evaluation and testing methodologies, and partner closely with product and engineering teams to develop scalable solutions for monitoring and enhancing the health of the evaluation ecosystem. You will play a key role to ensure the behavior evaluation at Waymo is efficient, scientifically rigorous, and supporting Waymo’s growth priorities.

In this hybrid role you will report to a Data Science Lead.

You will:

- Lead a roadmap to develop methodologies and Key Performance Indicators to measure the quality, cost efficiency, and business relevance for various behavior evaluation solutions at Waymo.

- Directly influence the portfolio of evaluation signals relied on by hundreds of software engineers to ensure their changes in the Waymo Driver are having positive intended impacts.

- Conduct deep dive analysis to understand performance bottlenecks in current evaluation methodologies, propose and prototype improvements in metrics, sampling strategy, statistical inference, etc.

- Become an expert in Waymo’s evaluation ecosystem for onboard software. Understand how a broad variety of  evaluation signals affect Waymo’s launch decisions, develop strategies for evaluating trade-offs, and provide actionable insights for designing launch criteria.

- Collaborate with product and engineering teams to build solutions for assessing Waymo’s evaluation portfolio at scale and accelerate the development for new evaluation.

- Collaborate with owners of various evaluation solutions, develop feedback loops to surface insights on evaluation quality to stakeholders and drive actionable plans for continuous improvement.

You have:

- Degree in a quantitative field (e.g. Statistics, Mathematics, Physics)

- Either a PhD in a quantitative field and 5+ years of industry experience, or 7+ years of industry experience solving data science problems

- Solid statistical background. Expertise using advanced statistical methods in an applied setting (e.g., experimentation design, causal inference, etc); familiarity with ML systems/models

- Demonstrated knowledge of data analysis libraries and packages in Python, R, and/or SQL

- Strong communication/leadership to address a high surface area across different organizations and products

- Ability to navigate through ambiguous business requirements and propose a clear technical solution

We prefer:

- PhD in a quantitative field

-

## Experience developing production-grade software and tools

- Experience as the technical lead for a broad data science area. A demonstrated track record of independently driving data science projects to deliver business value

- Experience with large-scale evaluation frameworks or experimentation/data platform for software development and machine learning systems

- Experience solving problems related to Autonomous Driving or Ride Hailing

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 $238,000—$302,000 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

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