Staff Hardware Reliability Engineer
Waymo · Mountain View, CA
- Level
- Senior
- Team
- Reliability
- Degree
- Required
- Experience asked
- 10+ years
- Industry
- Automotive
- Posted
- 30+ days ago
The role in 30 seconds
A senior reliability role at Waymo (automotive) in Mountain View, CA. Develop, communicate, and maintain long-term reliability roadmaps and strategies for your product area.
- They ask for
- 10+ years · degree required
- Tools it names
- Root cause, FMEA, Validation (IQ/OQ/PQ)
Read from the posting. The full description is below.
From the plant jobs report · week of October 19, 2026
Reliability Engineer roles in California: typical posted base $115k–$165k.
Median of the low and high ends of 61 live postings that list pay, out of 130 reliability engineer openings in California, read from manufacturers' own careers sites.
California plant jobs report →Pay by team and state →What moves pay →
How this role compares
Against 129 other live reliability postings in California.
- Base pay
- Not listed in this posting
- Experience asked
- More than usual (10+ vs 5+)
Typical $115k–$165k, from 61 postings that list pay.
Similar roles usually ask 5+ years.
Skills these teams ask for most
- ✓ Root cause 71%
- ✓ FMEA 43%
- ✓ New product launch 42%
- Automation 32%
- ✓ Validation (IQ/OQ/PQ) 28%
- SPC 20%
✓ = this posting asks for it too. % = share of similar postings that mention it.
At a glance
Pulled from the posting text. If it's not listed here, the posting didn't say.
How to get in at this plant
Five moves over a week or two. The first one takes ten minutes.
- 1
Pick 2–3 people on the Reliability team at Waymo
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- 2
Send a short, curious note
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- 3
Turn a reply into a short call
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- 4
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- 5
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This plant: Waymo in Mountain View
4 other open roles at this site.
- Product Quality Engineer, Automotive Sensors · Quality
- Product Quality Engineer, Vehicle Systems · Quality
- Director, FP&A - HW Engineering & Supply Chain · Manufacturing · Director+
- Staff Field Quality Engineer · Quality · Senior
Full description from WaymoAs posted on their careers site.ShowHide
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.
This role will report to a Manager of Hardware Reliability Engineering.
You will
- •Lead the reliability program for a Waymo hardware product area (e.g. LiDAR) across its full lifecycle from early development and prototyping, through EVT - DVT - PVT - production ramp and field deployment
- •Define and improve reliability processes, including risk analyses (DFMEA, FTA), design verification, test and failure analysis, and cross-functional optimizations
- •Work closely with US-based and international CMs, ODMs and Tier-1s to develop reliability test and validation programs that meet Waymo’s standards of reliability
- •Develop, communicate, and maintain long-term reliability roadmaps and strategies for your product area. Work collaboratively with TPMs to build reliability schedules and take responsibility for all deliverables while updating senior engineering leadership
- •Provide technical evaluations and strategic recommendations on designs, processes, materials and vendor selection to teams within the Waymo Engineering, and navigate complex vendor relationships
- •Manage program-level risks related to complex, multi-dimensional reliability issues and play a key role in mitigate those risks
Show full description ↓Show less ↑
You have
- •Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Material Science, or Physics
- •10 years of experience in end to end management of reliability programs for complex electromechanical systems
- •Experience in delivering on the reliability of 1-2 generations of products, from concept & prototyping, to production ramp and field deployment.
- •Experience in managing the DFMEA or other risk analysis process across a product line.
- •Extensive experience developing comprehensive reliability test plans, resolving complex failure analyses, and leading root-cause resolution across functions.
- •Strong technical background in the mechanics of materials and physics of failure for electronics and sensors.
We prefer
- •PhD Degree in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Material Science, or Physics
- •15 years of experience, as a manager, directing the reliability program at CMs, ODMs or international vendors and suppliers for electronic components and sub-systems
- •Experience in OEM automotive, Tier-1 suppliers, autonomous vehicle or sensor domain reliability
- •Experience in managing a reliability test lab with thermal, vibration and environmental test equipment
- •Product development and launch experience across multiple independent, high-volume hardware product categories.
- •Strong mentorship skills with a track record of driving technical leadership within a team
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.
$210,000 — $259,000 USD