Senior Safety Management System (SMS) Analytics Specialist

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 Waymo Safety team works to promote and help to continuously improve the safety of Waymo’s fully autonomous driving technology. Our experts develop safety goals and strategies, and conduct safety engineering analyses to ensure safety is being considered throughout the design and development of our vehicles. The team develops and promotes safety strategies and policies for autonomous vehicles for its work with regulatory authorities, lawmakers, law enforcement and public and non-profit organizations. Our Safety Team also helps advise on compliance with applicable environmental, health, and safety regulations.

This role follows a hybrid work schedule and reports to the Safety Management System Lead.

In the Senior Safety Management System (SMS) Analytics Specialist role, you will lead how Waymo measures and reports on the performance of its Safety Management System. This role sits at the intersection of data analytics and executive governance: you will develop and synthesize reliable metrics across our safety processes, increase awareness and understanding of SMS performance data, and translate complex trends into recommendations for senior leaders. When metrics highlight areas for improvement, you will partner across teams to ensure owners are assigned and solutions deliver measurable results. In this role, your work will directly drive continual improvement across Waymo’s safety programs.

You will:

• Develop Reliable Safety Performance Indicators: Design and refine SMS implementation, maturity, and effectiveness metrics grounded in industry best practices and international safety standards, assessing and maintaining metric quality and advising teams and leaders on proper metric interpretation and use.
  
  
• Map & Synthesize Multi-Domain Safety Management Metrics: Collect, quality-assure, and synthesize quantitative and qualitative metrics across multiple business functions and trace them to the company’s top-line safety objectives.
  
  
• Run SMS Performance Reporting Governance: Lead the processes and analytics workflows used to support executive leadership review of SMS performance data and aggregated trend analyses.
  
  
• Translate Signals into Executive Decision Material: Partner with data science, operational, and safety teams across Waymo to distill complex multi-source data into clear, decision-oriented briefings, dashboards, and continual-improvement recommendations for senior leaders.

• Drive Closed-Loop Action & Effectiveness Tracking: Monitor safety performance indicators against targets and thresholds; where indicators show adverse trends or fall short of targets, confirm an accountable owner is assigned and track action items through to verified closure and confirmed effectiveness.
  
  
• Scale Analytics Tooling & Audit Readiness: Define requirements for data collection, visualization, and reporting tools that improve the reliability and scalability of SMS performance measurement, and support preparation for domestic and international regulatory audits and evaluations.

You have:

• A Bachelor’s degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Engineering, Economics, Statistics, or a related scientific or analytic field.
  
  
• Minimum 5 years of experience in data analytics, safety or operational performance measurement, or business/technical intelligence within complex engineering, financial, transportation, or safety-critical organizations.
  
  
• Demonstrated expertise working with both quantitative and qualitative data and metrics, including developing metrics based on industry best practices or standards, evaluating and maintaining metric quality, and advising stakeholders on metric interpretation and limitations.
  
  
• Proficiency with modern data analytics, visualization, and reporting tools (e.g., SQL, Python/R, BI dashboards, and data pipelines) to collect, validate, and communicate performance data to executive leadership and governance committees.
  
  
• Proven ability to pull together and synthesize disparate metrics to drive continual improvement and verify the effectiveness of corrective actions.
  
  
• Strong cross-functional collaboration and communication skills, with experience translating complex technical and operational signals into clear, actionable narratives for senior decision-makers without direct authority.

We prefer:

• An advanced degree (Master’s or PhD) in Data Science, Computer Science, Engineering, Economics, Statistics, or a related scientific or analytic discipline.
  
  
• Hands-on familiarity with automotive, transportation, or aviation Safety Management System frameworks and safety performance indicators.
  
  
• Direct experience interpreting and implementing safety performance measurement requirements from vehicle, transportation, or aviation safety regulations and standards.
  
  
• Experience leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) / Large Language Model (LLM) workflows or automated data pipelines to synthesize qualitative and quantitative safety signals, detect emerging trends, and streamline executive reporting.
  
  
• Experience designing and running closed-loop performance governance processes, including threshold alerting, root-cause and CAPA tracking, and statistical or empirical verification of mitigation effectiveness.

• Experience partnering with software/data engineering teams to define data schemas and business requirements for scalable internal analytics and reporting platforms.

Travel Requirements:

• This is a hybrid position based in San Francisco or Mountain View. Travel is required (approximately 10%) for team onsites, cross-functional workshops, and project-based activities such as internal or external safety audits.

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$168,000—$207,000 USD