Program Manager - Vehicle Recovery Standards, Processes, & Quality

Waymo•Los Angeles, CA

16h•Remote

About The Position

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 Vehicle Recovery, Safety & Logistics Lead is a critical operational leadership role responsible for ensuring the safe, efficient, and disciplined management of vehicle recovery operations, market safety oversight, and operational logistics within a Waymo market. As Waymo scales both Waymo Owned & Operated (O&O) and Partner markets, this role ensures that recovery procedures, safety standards, and vehicle logistics are consistently executed to maintain fleet availability, protect operational integrity, and reinforce Waymo’s commitment to safety. Operating within Market Operations, this leader serves as the market’s safety champion, ensuring that vehicle recovery activities, incident response coordination, and operational logistics are managed with discipline and aligned with Waymo’s Safety Management System (SMS) and regulatory expectations. The role also plays a key coordination function across partners, vendors, depot teams, and centralized operations to ensure incidents are resolved quickly, vehicle movement is optimized, and operational disruptions are minimized. This role requires strong operational judgment, safety leadership, and real-time coordination capability, enabling the market to maintain high service reliability while managing the complexities of autonomous fleet operations.

Requirements

A minimum of 7+ years of professional experience within safety critical transportation workflows, autonomous driving, aviation, or high-stakes logistics sectors.
Proven mastery of Safety Management Systems (SMS) with a track record of maintaining rigorous regulatory and operational standards.
Demonstrated ability to manage real-time incident response and complex vehicle movements in diverse, high-pressure environments.
Concrete experience in vendor management, specifically overseeing multi third-party vendor ecosystems in transportation while maintaining strict cost efficiency.
Strong analytical skills with the ability to monitor recovery trends and utilize data to measurably improve fleet availability.
Expert-level communication skills capable of seamlessly coordinating technical requirements between centralized operations and local field teams.

Nice To Haves

Proficiency in data visualization tools (e.g., Tableau, Looker) to design and monitor automated partner performance dashboards, tracking critical metrics such as response times, cost-per-recovery, and SLA compliance to drive data-backed accountability.
A Master’s degree in Business Administration, Systems Engineering, Robotics, or Supply Chain Management provides a deeper theoretical framework for complex deployments.
Prior success in directly negotiating with state or municipal DOTs and navigating the nuances of autonomous vehicle permitting.
Possession of a PMP or Six Sigma Black Belt to bring a standardized, disciplined approach to rapid market scaling.
Formal experience in public relations or emergency response communication, particularly in high-visibility technology sectors.

Responsibilities

Build with central teams and track operational metrics for safe vehicle recovery operations.
Lead daily stand-ups between engineering and local ops to sync international infrastructure with vehicle deployment schedules.
Direct the integration of depot logistics and "Day 1" playbooks to ensure all cross-functional teams are prepared for commercial launch.
Act as the primary escalation point for internal teams and regulatory agencies to bypass hurdles and keep launch timelines on track.
Build and maintain relationships with transit authorities and emergency services to ensure safe community integration and positive public perception.
Translate regional infrastructure data and community dynamics into actionable feature requests for the central product roadmap.
Audit operational logs and identify market-specific threats to ensure 100% adherence to municipal permit requirements.