2026 Summer Intern, MS/PhD, ML Compute, Hardware Engineer
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.
Waymo interns partner with leaders in the industry on projects that create impact to the company. We believe learning is a two-way street: applying your knowledge while providing you with opportunities to expand your skill-set. Interns are an important part of our culture and our recruiting pipeline. Join us at Waymo for a fun and rewarding internship!
You will:
- Design a hardware-friendly algorithm for compressing activations, weights and instructions in an ML accelerator
- Develop a proof-of-concept hardware implementation of the compressor-decompressor
- Study trade-offs between hardware complexity, performance, compression loss
- Collaborate with ML model owners to estimate impact of compression on model quality
You have:
- Enrolled in a Masters program in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering or equivalent
- Strong understanding of computer architecture for domain-specific accelerators
- Strong programming skills in C++ and/or Python
- Proficiency in digital design using High-level synthesis, SystemVerilog or similar languages
We prefer:
- Enrolled in a PhD program in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering or equivalent
- Understanding of ML numerics, error analysis and model quality evaluations
- Experience with domain-specific languages for hardware design (Eg. Chisel, Magma etc.)
- Familiarity with high-level architectural simulators such as Gem5
Note: This will be a hybrid onsite internship position. We will accept resumes on a rolling basis until the role is filled. To be in consideration for multiple roles, you will need to apply to each one individually - please apply to the top 3 roles you are interested in.
