Staff Software Engineer, 3D & Data Visualization Tools — San Francisco

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's central platform and product for visual debugging, telemetry, and triage provides teams across the company (including Perception, Behavior, and Simulation) with 3D and data visualization tools, using a C++ and TypeScript framework to integrate domain-specific visualizations into a single tool. The backend processes and streams 4D (3D + time) time-series logs, real-time telemetry, and simulation data. In this L6 role, you will own the C++ server infrastructure and concurrent data streaming pipelines. You will design C++ abstractions to load and process fleet logs, optimize Borg and RPC performance, and build APIs that let engineers and automated evaluation pipelines analyze driving data. You will: • Build and maintain concurrent C++ backend services (Borg/Boq RPC servers) that stream time-series and sensor data to the client. • Scale C++ data delivery abstractions for offboard storage (CNS, Spanner) and WebRTC streams. • Optimize latency and throughput using log-sampling, payload post-processing (deduplication, timeline merging), and async C++ services. • Build backend APIs for automated callers (triage bots, evaluation executors) to render driving scenes. • Plan technical roadmaps and own the scaling, security, and performance isolation of the offboard data infrastructure. • Mentor engineers, review system designs, and establish systems-level C++ best practices. You have: • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience. • 5 years of software development experience in C++. • Experience with systems programming, including multi-threading, concurrency, memory efficiency, and profiling. • Experience building high-throughput distributed systems, RPC services, or time-series data pipelines. • Experience leading technical designs and mentoring engineers on complex, multi-quarter projects. We prefer: • Experience with Google-internal infrastructure (Borg, Boq, Stubby/gRPC, CNS, and Spanner). • Experience developing backend systems for video/image rendering, WebRTC, or developer tools. • Familiarity with autonomous vehicle data formats (RoadGraph, sensor logs, and trajectory prediction outputs). • Familiarity with web client architectures (Angular, TypeScript) to design client-server APIs. • Experience with TDD, performance profiling, and integration testing. 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 $251,000 — $310,000 USD