Jobs / United States / Waymo LLC
Staff Software Engineer - Simulation Realism
Waymo LLC · 🇺🇸 Mountain View, 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 roles182 certified filings for “Software Engineer” (Software Developers) in CA: $200k–$240k, median $205k. Most were filed at wage level II (66%) — 2 lottery entries, ≈31% 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).
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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. 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 Simulator Team at Waymo builds state-of-the-art simulations of realistic environments for testing and training the Waymo Driver. Our team is a diverse, and collaborative group of software engineers, machine learning (ML) engineers, and data scientists. We develop industry-leading simulation solutions using advanced ML algorithms that measure and enhance the performance of the Waymo Driver. By applying machine learning, we model the real world, including realistic agents (vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists), roads, traffic control systems, and weather conditions. A key aspect of our simulation effort is the generation of foundational data that enables realistic simulation and trustworthy evaluations. This involves producing high-fidelity world representations from complex, large-scale multi-modal sensor datasets. We face significant challenges in ensuring the quality and accuracy of these signals, and in engineering robust, scalable systems for handling massive data volumes. This includes designing and implementing effective data lifecycle management strategies to maintain data integrity and accessibility. In this hybrid role, you will report to a Sr Staff TLM. You will: • Design and develop scalable C++ and Python software systems for our data generation and management platform. • Build and optimize data pipelines for processing, labeling, and curating large-scale multi-modal sensor data. • Implement robust data lifecycle management, versioning, and storage solutions. • Improve the performance, reliability, and scalability of the data platform. • Collaborate with engineers and researchers to define and build data APIs and interfaces. • Contribute to the long-term architecture of the simulation data ecosystem. You have: • BS or MS in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent. • 7+ years of experience in software development, focusing on backend or infrastructure. • Strong coding and design skills in C++ and/or Python. • Experience with large-scale data processing systems (e.g., Flume, Beam, Spark). • Experience with databases, data warehousing, and production monitoring. • Ability to solve open-ended technical and system design challenges. We prefer: • Experience building data platforms, data lakes, or ML feature stores. • Familiarity with data management best practices for ML. • Experience with large-scale