What are the responsibilities and job description for the 2026 Summer Intern, PhD, Research, 3D/4D Scene Reconstruction and Understanding position at Waymo?
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 mission of the Waymo AI Foundations team is to develop machine learning solutions addressing open problems in autonomous driving, towards the goal of safely operating Waymo vehicles in dozens of cities and under all driving conditions. As part of our work, we also initiate and foster collaborations with other research teams in Alphabet. AI Foundations areas that we are currently focusing on include reinforcement learning, learning from demonstration, generative modeling, Bayesian inference, hierarchical learning, and robust evaluation.
You Will
At Waymo, we don’t just accept differences - we celebrate it, we support it, and we thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, our products and our community. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.
The expected hourly rate for this full-time position is listed below. Interns are also eligible to participate in the Company’s generous benefits programs, subject to eligibility requirements.
Hourly PhD Pay
$85—$85 USD
The mission of the Waymo AI Foundations team is to develop machine learning solutions addressing open problems in autonomous driving, towards the goal of safely operating Waymo vehicles in dozens of cities and under all driving conditions. As part of our work, we also initiate and foster collaborations with other research teams in Alphabet. AI Foundations areas that we are currently focusing on include reinforcement learning, learning from demonstration, generative modeling, Bayesian inference, hierarchical learning, and robust evaluation.
You Will
- Solve research problems related to scene reconstruction and understanding from real-world scenarios, leveraging geometric foundation models and/or vision-language foundation models
- Prototype and iterate on various research ideas using Waymo's internal driving data
- Present research findings to a wide audience within Waymo, with the possibility of publishing results to the research community
- Currently pursuing a PhD degree in computer science or a related technical field
- Hands-on computer vision and machine learning experience (prior internships or coursework)
- Related publications in major conferences (e.g. CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, NeurIPS, ICLR, etc) or ongoing research projects in this area
- Strong software engineering skills (Python, C )
- Prior experience in feed-forward scene reconstruction methods (e.g., VGGT) and vision-language foundation models
- Ability to rapidly prototype research ideas in deep learning frameworks (e.g. TensorFlow, PyTorch, JAX)
- Help solve challenging problems with a direct impact on the company
- Competitive compensation packages with a housing/relocation bonus (if applicable)
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance
- Fun intern events and networking opportunities
- Free breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks
- Free access to Google shuttles
- Onsite gym
At Waymo, we don’t just accept differences - we celebrate it, we support it, and we thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, our products and our community. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.
The expected hourly rate for this full-time position is listed below. Interns are also eligible to participate in the Company’s generous benefits programs, subject to eligibility requirements.
Hourly PhD Pay
$85—$85 USD
Salary : $85