Jobs / United States / Waymo LLC
Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Predictive Planner, Systems Arch
Waymo LLC · 🇺🇸 Mountain View, CA, USA; San Francisco, CA, USA
Sponsorship verdict
Sponsorship possible
One solid signal, not two — worth applying, and worth asking about sponsorship early.
- Employer is on a government sponsor recordThe US Department of Labor certified 290 H-1B/E-3 labor condition applications for this employer between Oct 2025 and Jun 2026 (latest Jun 2026) — the step every H-1B hire needs first. USCIS also records 87 H-1B approvals in FY2023. Source: LCA disclosure data (US Department of Labor (OFLC)).
- The posting doesn’t mention sponsorshipSilence isn’t a refusal — ask the recruiter before investing much time.
- No salary bar for this routeH-1B has no fixed salary bar: the employer must pay at least the prevailing wage for the role and area. Cap-subject employers enter a lottery weighted by wage level. Source: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/12/29/2025-23853/weighted-selection-process-for-registrants-and-petitioners-seeking-to-file-cap-subject-h-1b, rules effective 2026-02-27.
- What Waymo LLC paid sponsored hires in similar roles9 certified filings for “Systems Engineer” (Mechanical Engineers) in CA: $187k–$235k, median $230k. Most were filed at wage level IV (63%) — 4 lottery entries, ≈61% projected selection odds for cap-subject employers. Source: US Department of Labor LCA disclosure data (Oct 2025 – Jun 2026).
- Confirmed live todayWhen a source last listed this job as open.
US H-1B: cap-subject employers enter a lottery weighted by wage level — Level I gets 1 entry, Level IV gets 4 (DHS projected selection odds ≈15% at Level I to ≈61% at Level IV). Universities and non-profit research employers are cap-exempt. The $100,000 fee for new petitions from abroad is currently blocked by a court order (appeal pending).
A verdict summarises public evidence; it is not legal advice and never a guarantee — the employer and the immigration authority decide. Sign in to factor in where you can already work.
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Sponsor Radar — Waymo LLC
The US Department of Labor certified 290 H-1B/E-3 labor condition applications for this employer between Oct 2025 and Jun 2026 (latest Jun 2026) — the step every H-1B hire needs first. USCIS also records 87 H-1B approvals in FY2023. Source: LCA disclosure data (US Department of Labor (OFLC)).
Past sponsorship or register membership never guarantees sponsorship for this vacancy or for you. Full Sponsor Radar for Waymo LLC →
About the role
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 predict 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 performant deep neural networks. These models enable the autonomous vehicle to navigate complex environments safely and efficiently. The system architecture team handles the onboard contract of the model with the system, including kinematics, interfaces and representations. Our team’s mission is to work across the stack, building the best setup for the model to drive. We tackle this through projects in data, modeling, metrics, and the overall planner system. In this role, you will report to a Technical Lead Manager. You will: • Tackle challenging real-world problems with ML and engineering solutions. • Use state of the art techniques to design and build ML models, deploy them in the real world on production vehicles • Design and build the necessary architectures, algorithms, pipelines and evaluation systems on Google's extensive data infrastructure • Collaborate with researchers, product area owners and engineers to develop safe, smooth planning behavior for all road users & deliver product requirements. You have: • Bachelors in Computer Science, ML, Robotics, similar technical field of study, or equivalent practical experience • Hands-on experience with modern deep learning libraries (eg: TensorFlow, JAX, Pytorch) • Proficient programming skills (eg: Python, C/C++) • Strong analytical and problem solving skills • 4+ years of experience in Machine Learning modeling and/or Autonomous Vehicles systems We prefer: • MS or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or a related field • Publications in top-tier conferences such as ICML, NeurIPS, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ICLR, IROS, CoRL, ACL, or EMNLP • Prior software development or ML research industry experience (including internships) • General software engineering experience solving motion planning or related robotics problems • Experience applying or evaluating ML-based systems in production environments • Experience with performance optimization of deep models, including with respect to specific hardware architectures 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 $213,000 — $263,000 USD