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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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