Staff Tech Lead Software Engineer, Vehicle Realism Platform
Waymo· Autonomous Driving· Sep 18, 2026 · 1mo ago
Mountain View, CA, USA · San Francisco, CA, USA
In office
Full-time
Lead
$141K–$219K est.
6+ years exp
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. Waymo’s Simulation Team builds technology that supports the development of the Waymo Driver. It allows the Waymo driver to be tested on millions of miles of traffic before it hits the road. Simulation is crucial to Waymo’s mission of developing the world’s most experienced driver.
The VRP (Vehicle Realism Platform) team builds tools and systems to enable realistic autonomous-driving simulation capabilities across all hardware platforms and diverse driving conditions. VRP manages the interface between the core Simulator Architecture and the physical representation of the vehicle, which includes platform expression, physics, environment, timing, and hardware models in the Simulator. We ensure that signals we get from simulation reflect real-world driving behavior. Our team empowers engineers across Waymo to safely iterate, test, and validate autonomous driving at scale, directly supporting autonomous driving software development, evaluation, and deployment worldwide .
You will:
Collaborate with onboard and research engineers to expand simulation capabilities and achieve critical Waymo milestones.
Monitor and improve the reproducibility, reliability, and usability of the Waymo simulator.
Design long-term architectures to accommodate a growing number of internal customers and product requirements.
Bridge vehicle subsystems and simulation infrastructure to enhance overall robotic realism.
Partner closely with collaborators from Simulator, Eval, Hardware, and Onboard orgs, integrating the building blocks they provide and turning them into reliable, reproducible simulation solutions.
You have:
Hands-on experience building a popular (internal or external-facing) product
Experience on backend knowledge such as workflows, databases, SQL, debugging, production monitoring, etc
6+ years experience in software development
A strong background in C++
We prefer:
Experience with the release of software in a highly distributed heterogeneous execution environment
Experience with systems programming (game engines, database, OS, distributed)
Experience with robotics or perception systems
Experience with performance optimization in complex backend and infrastructure systems
Experience with ML
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 $251,000 — $310,000 USD
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