Job brief: Staff Research Scientist, Foundation Models Recipes

What JoRoute checked · Checked by JoRoute

• Listed on Waymo's own job board. JoRoute does not take listings from job ads or recruiters.
• First seen by JoRoute 2026-11-04 (3 days ago); last confirmed on the board 2026-11-07.
• The apply link opens careers.withwaymo.com, the address Waymo's board gives for this job.
• No other listing with this title and place on this board in the last 90 days.
• No layoff notices (WARN) under this name in the state files JoRoute reads.

What the listing says · Employer's own words, not checked

• Pay: $251,000 to $310,000 a year
• Job type: Not stated
• Where: Mountain View, CA, US; San Francisco, CA, US; Kirkland, WA, US · Kirkland (US-KIR-6THD) · Mountain View (US-MTV-EMF680) +1
• Posted: 2026-08-03 · over 60 days ago

What the job asks · Employer's own words, not checked

Level: Lead / staff. The title says "Staff".

Must have

• PhD or Masters in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or a similar technical field;
• with 3+ years of industry or post-doc research experience in Data-centric AI, Reinforcement Learning or Foundation Models

Conditions

• In this hybrid role, you will report to a Senior Director of AI Foundations
• Holidays: 13 paid days per year

Main duties

• Own the data recipe for Waymo’s Foundation Model pre-training and post-training
• Lead and drive science on best practices around clustering, filtering, de-duplication, long-tail data mining, memorization, etc.
• Tech-lead a team of research engineers to build the data flywheel to enable the above from Waymo’s massive driving data
• Integrate emerging research from the broader community to do rigorous ablations and promising data research techniques. This includes scaling ladders for pre…
• Engage with the wider research community on best practices around data centric evaluation creation and refinement

Lines copied from the posting, not rewritten. "Preferred" or "nice to have" items are not listed as must-haves.

How it compares · Compared by JoRoute from listings

• Across Waymo's 317 open listings, 50% of those with a posting date were first posted more than 60 days ago. How Waymo hires

What nobody outside the employer knows · Not known

• Whether the role is already filled or on hold: employers often leave listings up.
• How many people applied, and who reads the applications.
• Where in the published range an offer would land.

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1. Is this role still open, and when do you hope to fill it?
2. Which of the listed places is this role based in?
3. What are the interview steps, and when should I expect to hear back?

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