Staff Software Engineer, Backend In-Car Experience

Waymo • San Francisco, CA

5d

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. At Waymo, we are building the world's most experienced driver. The In-Car Experience team is at the center of how our riders interact with our autonomous vehicle technology. We design and build the user-facing software and systems within the car, creating a safe and intuitive experience for every trip. Join us to define the future of in-car interactions for autonomous ride-hailing. In this role, you will own the backend systems and API surfaces that power the rider experience, acting as the bridge between the autonomous vehicle, the cloud, and user-facing applications.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of professional software development experience working on backend systems.
• Proficiency in C++, Java, or Go, with a strong understanding of concurrent programming.
• Experience designing and implementing distributed systems, microservices, and defining robust APIs (REST or gRPC).
• Experience leading technical designs, making architectural trade-offs, and mentoring other engineers.
• Excellent communication skills and ability to collaborate effectively with diverse engineering teams.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with Google’s infrastructure (Spanner, Stubby/gRPC, Borg/Kubernetes) or similar large-scale cloud platforms (AWS/Azure).
• Background in IoT, connected devices, or automotive telematics (handling intermittent connectivity, bandwidth constraints, and device shadows).
• Experience with real-time data streaming and event-driven architectures.
• Knowledge of the Android ecosystem from a platform/backend perspective.

Responsibilities

• Design and build scalable backend services and APIs (gRPC/Protobuf) that power in-car features such as trip status, media streaming, and cabin controls.
• Architect high-availability systems that manage the synchronization of state between the cloud and the autonomous vehicle fleet in real-time.
• Work closely with Android client engineers, Product Managers, and Vehicle Software teams to define data contracts and system behaviors.
• Optimize data pipelines for low-latency delivery to ensure a responsive and "magical" rider experience, even in varying network conditions.
• Manage the full software development life-cycle of backend services, focusing on security, reliability, and observability for safety-sensitive systems.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level