Product Manager, Perception Modeling - Semantics

Waymo
Mountain View; San Francisco, US
Hybrid

Who this role is best for

Best suited to mid-level product managers with technical fluency in Perception, working in autonomous driving technology and managing large engineering teams.

Best fit for

  • Product managers with experience in launching and optimizing Perception models.
    — “Experience in launching new model architectures, model consolidation, or Foundational Model distillation
  • Candidates comfortable with long-term vision setting and cross-functional collaboration.
    — “Set the vision for model architecture on a 12-36 month timeline
  • Individuals with a background in engineering or advanced technical degrees.
    — “Master’s Degree in Engineering or previous experience working as an Engineer

Things to consider

  • Hybrid work arrangement with reporting to a Group Product Manager.
    — “This role follows a hybrid work schedule and reports to a Group Product Manager
  • Requires managing a large team of 60+ engineers and stakeholders.
    — “working directly with a group of 60+ engineers, Technical Program Managers, and other Product Managers

How to stand out

  • Highlight specific examples of model optimization and compute efficiency improvements.
    — “Experience optimizing models for compute efficiency
  • Demonstrate experience with Large Foundational Models, particularly Gemini.
    — “Experience training and releasing Large Foundational Models, especially Gemini
  • Showcase your ability to conduct root cause analysis in AV behavior.
    — “Conduct root cause analysis and conferring with partners in Engineering to propose viable solutions
Pace · SteadyCollaboration · HighAutonomy · MediumDecision Impact · TeamLevel · Senior

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • model launches
  • improved model capabilities
  • enhanced perception models
Typical background
5+ years in product managementtechnical fluency in perception or related field

Skills & requirements

Required

Product Vision SettingModel Architecture PlanningCross-functional Team ManagementRoot Cause Analysis

Preferred

Large Foundational Model TrainingGemini Model Experience

About the role

Original posting from Waymo

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 Product Management Team is a mission-driven team responsible for writing and enacting first-of-their-kind playbooks to bring fully autonomous driving technology to market. Our team develops simple solutions for complex problems by orchestrating cross-functional efforts to safely drive Waymo’s technology and the products it enables forward. We do this by understanding the customer, the business, and the technology. We are humble about the scope of our work, collaborative in our approach to problem-solving, and ambitious about our vision for the future. 

This role follows a hybrid work schedule and reports to a Group Product Manager.

You will:

Act as an approver for model launches, understanding and negotiating between tradeoffs, regressions, and improvements across all of a model’s surface area

Plan for future investments into model capabilities on a 12+ month timeline by understanding the limitations of the current model architecture and the immediate needs of our RIdehailing business 

Set the vision for model architecture on a 12-36 month timeline by understanding the overall needs of Waymo and the current State of the Art ML/AI research, focused on Object-level Semantic understanding + reasoning

Manage the execution of upcoming milestones by working directly with a group of 60+ engineers, Technical Program Managers, and other Product Managers

Conduct root cause analysis and conferring with partners in Engineering to propose viable solutions by examining AV behavior from a mix of real world, synthetic, and simulated events

You have:

5 years Product Management experience

Experience iterating on models over the course of 12+ months

Experience in launching new model architectures, model consolidation, or Foundational Model distillation

Experience optimizing models for compute efficiency

Technical fluency in Perception or related field

We prefer:

7 years Product Management experience

Master’s Degree in Engineering or previous experience working as an Engineer

Experience working with Perception models

Experience training and releasing Large Foundational Models, especially Gemini

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$241,000—$297,000 USD

Source: Waymo careers

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