Vehicle Quality Engineer Full Time

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 Operations exists to deliver the Waymo Driver to the world. We are a global team building and scaling the world’s first and leading autonomous fleet and operations platform. From component sourcing to end customer management, we enable and create value for Waymo through scaled and orchestrated deployment of the Waymo Driver. At Waymo, we are dedicated to building a culture that promotes collaboration and celebration. We value our team members’ unique backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences and support and encourage all team members to share their ideas to help Waymo better serve the communities in which we operate.

This role follows an in-office work schedule and reports to the Vehicle Quality Lead.

You Will

• Develop and execute the vehicle Control Plan for incoming, in-process, and outgoing quality controls, to assure the finished vehicle meets all technical specifications.
• Provide on-site support at the manufacturing operation site to manage quality controls in sub-assembly, vehicle integration, and vehicle system bring-up, including troubleshooting of vehicle systems, end-of-line testing, sensor calibration, and drive testing.
• Work with the manufacturing team daily on site at the factory, providing oversight of execution of agreed processes, assuring that manufacturing and inspection processes are performed correctly using the proper tools, materials and methods.
• Meticulously document problems and work cross-functionally to contain, root cause, and implement corrective actions. Assess and approve vehicle repairs and reworks to meet technical requirements.
• Verify each vehicle’s compliance to specification and sign off completed vehicles prior to shipment from the manufacturing facility to customers.
• Investigate, correct and monitor ongoing improvement of product quality issues identified in the manufacturing facility or experienced by customers. Must enable collaborative, timely, data-driven decision making to tackle product quality related issues.

You Have

• 6+ years experience in a Manufacturing/Engineering/Operations Quality role in the automotive/transportation OEM or Tier supplier manufacturing arena.
• Bachelor’s Engineering degree or equivalent work experience; extensive hands-on experience in automotive manufacturing can compensate for not having an engineering degree.
• Experience with a variety of light assembly and manufacturing processes.
• Understands typical automotive manufacturing, manual assembly, test and inspection methodologies.
• Strong skills leading the 7D problem solving processes : problem definition, containment, occurrence/escape root cause analysis, corrective/preventive action planning and execution.
• Demonstrates excellent problem solving & communication skills while working alone and in large teams; interfacing with assembly operators, inspectors, production supervisors, engineers, and technical managers.

We Prefer

• 10+ years experience in a Manufacturing/Engineering/Operations Quality role in the automotive/transportation OEM or Tier supplier manufacturing arena.
• Strong experience with manufacturing supply chain techniques and processes such as supplier audits, new product introductions, product life cycles, manufacturing engineering, first article inspection, technical documentation, and APQP/PPAP.
• Experience with quality control planning for early development engineering projects, and then executing and improving those quality plans to complete the pre-production and scaling of manufacturing operations.
• Demonstrated hands-on mechanical, manufacturing process and vehicle electrical troubleshooting experience.
• Detailed understanding of factory-related and customer-related product quality and reliability metrics.
• Experience with interpretation of design drawings/GD&T, schematics, and cosmetic standards for creation inspection criteria and execution of inspection plans.

Travel Requirements

Minimal travel (

The expected base salary range for this full-time position 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. 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

$158,000—$171,000 USD