Senior Machine Learning Engineer; Multimodal Perception, LLM​/VLM

Requirements

• BS or MS in Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Robotics, or a related field
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• 4+ years of applied industry experience in autonomous vehicles, robotics, or complex ML systems
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• Fluency in Python or C++, with deep hands-on expertise in PyTorch or Jax for matrix manipulation and module implementation
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• Deep understanding and proven practical experience with model distillation frameworks and quantization techniques for real-time compute constraints
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• Demonstrated hands-on experience building, training, or deploying Multimodal Foundation Models or Vision-Language Models (VLMs)
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• (Desirable) PhD in Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Robotics, or a related field
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• (Desirable) Hands-on experience managing and optimizing large-scale teacher-student training loops
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• (Desirable) A proven track record of successfully deploying Vision-Language queries in highly constrained, real-time environments
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• (Desirable) Experience with large-scale distributed training, Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT), or Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) for Foundation Models and VLMs
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• (Desirable) Deep expertise in long-context temporal reasoning for sequential decision-making or complex video understanding
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• (Desirable) First-author publications in premier computer vision and machine learning conferences, such as CVPR, NeurIPS, ICCV, or ECCV

• The Semantics team is a specialized subgroup within the Perception organization  mission is to bring the immense reasoning power and innate world knowledge of massive foundation models directly onto the Waymo Driver
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• We focus on building an onboard multi-task, multimodal perception model designed to tackle highly complex and unpredictable "long-tail" scenarios
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• Architect and train large-scale, onboard ML perception models that are instrumental to ensuring vehicle safety and regulatory compliance
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• Drive cross-functional collaboration to engineer robust, high-reliability training pipelines within a dynamic, rapid-delivery environment
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• Leverage deep computer vision expertise to design novel, custom architectures from first principles to solve complex perception challenges
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• Contribute to a vibrant and positive team culture where diverse skill sets and backgrounds are valued. Support the growth of junior engineers and foster a high-performing, collaborative team environment