2026 Summer Intern, PhD, Machine Learning

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.

The Predictive Planning team (PrePlan) develops and deploys state of the art machine learning solutions that predicts the future State of the world and plan the Waymo Driver's Behavior. Our mission is to transform Waymo's unprecedented scale of driving data into robust, generalizable, and performat deep neural networks. These models enable the autonomous vehicle to navigate complex environments safely and efficiently.

Waymo interns partner with leaders in the industry on projects that create impact to the company. We believe learning is a two-way street: applying your knowledge while providing you with opportunities to expand your skill-set. Interns are an important part of our culture and our recruiting pipeline. Join us at Waymo for a fun and rewarding internship!

You will:

• Research, implement, and evaluate state-of-the-art generative models for planning and predictions using JAX
• Conduct machine learning models experiments
• Produce high-quality, thoroughly tested code
• Collaborate with research, product, and engineering teams to introduce new research concepts

You have:

• Currently pursuing a PhD degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or related field
• Experience with deep learning, or reinforcement learning
• Hands-on experience with modern deep learning libraries (eg: TensorFlow, JAX, Pytorch) with basic programming skills (eg: Python, C/C++)
• Strong analytical and debugging skills

We prefer:

• Publications in top-tier conferences such as : ICML, NeurlPS, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ICLR, IROS, CoRL, ACL, or EMNLP
• Prior software development or research industry experience (including internships)

Note: This will be a hybrid onsite internship position. We will accept resumes on a rolling basis until the role is filled. To be in consideration for multiple roles, you will need to apply to each one individually - please apply to the top 3 roles you are interested in.

The expected hourly rate for this full-time position is listed below. Interns are also eligible to participate in the Company's generous benefits programs, subject to eligibility requirements.

Hourly PhD Pay

$85-$85 USD