Senior Software Engineer, Real-Time Communication Infrastructure

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 real-time communication infrastructure between Waymo vehicles and cloud services is one of the most critical pillars for Waymo’s rapid business growth and expansion. Our mission is to develop and maintain a cutting-edge, globally scalable infrastructure for real-time communication between Waymo vehicles and cloud services. As Waymo rapidly scales its commercial operations and expands its autonomous fleet across diverse operating environments, sustaining ultra-reliable vehicle connectivity in challenging, congested, and weak-signal wireless conditions is essential to fleet safety and availability.

You will:

• Lead the architectural design, implementation, and scaling of Waymo’s mission-critical real-time communication infrastructure and onboard networking stack.
• Design and build highly reliable, low-latency transport protocols and communication systems to ensure continuous connectivity across dynamic and challenging wireless environments.
• Optimize network performance, data transmission efficiency, and traffic prioritization between vehicle fleets and cloud services.
• Partner with cross-functional engineering teams across onboard vehicle systems, cloud platforms, and fleet operations to support mission-critical data exchange.
• Provide technical leadership, mentor team members, and champion engineering best practices in system reliability, concurrency, and performance.

You have:

• BS degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of software engineering experience in C++ within Linux environments.
• 3+ years of experience designing, building, and operating low-latency network protocols, communication systems, or distributed systems.
• Deep expertise in systems and network programming, multithreading, concurrency, and asynchronous I/O.
• Demonstrated track record of technical leadership—navigating ambiguous problems and delivering complex systems to production.

We prefer:

• MS or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field.
• Experience with wireless and cellular networking architectures (LTE/5G, multi-link bonding, mobile networking protocols).
• Familiarity with Linux networking internals, socket programming, or network traffic management.
• Experience with modern transport protocols, proxies, or streaming technologies (e.g., QUIC, WebRTC, Envoy).
• Experience developing software for embedded Linux, automotive platforms, robotics, or autonomous vehicle systems.
• Strong background in performance profiling, network optimization, and system resilience.
• Location in or willingness to relocate to the San Francisco Bay Area is preferred.

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