Staff Systems Test Engineer, Scenario Quality and Maintenance Systems

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.

Waymo's Systems Engineering team works together to blend software and hardware systems in groundbreaking new ways. We set the high performance standards that ensure our vehicles run smoothly and keep passengers safe, then design and perform the tests that validate that performance. We're looking for talented teammates who’ll help us maintain strong teamwork and are passionate about driving results.

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) and launching new vehicle platforms. Scenario Ops plays a critical role in this expansion, making it possible to scale safely and efficiently. The team owns the scaled delivery and maintenance of simulation-based directed testing coverage used to evaluate the Safety and performance of the driver as Waymo continues to scale.

In this hyrbid role, you will be reporting to a Staff Program Manager

You will:

Design Scalable Quality Architecture: Move the organization towards scalable QC (Quality Control) methodologies for test creation (e.g., statistical sampling, risk-based auditing, and automated validation). Be the primary architect of how we verify work at increased scale

Manage meta-quality assurance: Develop and manage our meta-quality framework to drive overall test quality assurance. Build dashboards and identify opportunities to improve first-time accuracy and reduce rework rates

Maintain test health: Drive increased automation in detection and resolution of test health issues identified in our vast scenario test database to keep quality / test uptime high

Create the playbook: Develop the playbook for making maintenance adjustments at scale by leveraging tooling automation strategically while also partnering w/ SMEs to develop standards and guidelines that enable our vendor workforce to drive efficient resolution

You have:

A Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Robotics, or other relevant technical field

8+ years of experience in Test Engineering, QA Engineering, Software Development in Test, Site Reliability Engineering, Technical Operations or other equivalent experience

Excellent debugging and Python/C++ coding skills

Proficiency in SQL or other data analysis tools

Experience architecting testing programs at scale

Experience leading / driving test automation strategies

Ability to thrive in a high ambiguity, dynamic environment

We prefer:

Experience with software development for robotics, autonomous vehicles, or similar

Familiarity with AQL (Acceptable Quality Limit) sampling or other statistical process control methodologies

Experience with Lean / Six Sigma process improvement methodologies

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

$230,000 — $284,000 USD