Waymo Interview Questions
& Process

The whole thing had four interviews, each about 45 minutes, all on video. The virtual onsite was made up of 2 LeetCode style questions and 1 ML design question plus 1 ML basic question. First up was a chill chat with a research scientist. He told me about his work and what Waymo research is generally about, saying they look for research interns who want to publish papers. Then he asked me about my background and papers, maybe asking for some details. It was pretty laid back, and we didn't go super deep, so I'm not totally sure what the point was.

The process started with a recruiter call where we discussed the job and my background. Then, I had a follow-up chat with a Network Engineer about the role, my experience, and some hypothetical situations. I thought it went okay, though nerves might have affected my answers a bit, but the interviewer seemed to get what I meant. I know there were other candidates and they'll pick the best fit. It was a bit of a letdown to get a generic automated rejection email after a real interview, which felt impersonal. I made time and effort to prepare, and an automated email felt like a missed opportunity for them to show better class. It's disappointing not to get any specific feedback.

After a good hiring manager round, I was scheduled for 4 panel interviews, each lasting 45 minutes, spread across two days. In total, I dedicated over 5 hours to interacting with the team, only to be met with silence. Even after following up with the recruiter and the hiring manager over three weeks later, there has been no response, not even a rejection email. This lack of communication from the company is very unprofessional. Given my 5+ years of product management experience, I at least expected a standard rejection notification. It's quite disappointing.

I went through three interviews in the 2nd and 3rd week of May. I didn't get an offer, but it was a really positive experience and a great way to learn, especially for someone without a CS background trying to get into autonomous driving. Ms. Song, a Senior Recruiter at Waymo, was my main contact. The first interview was a casual project discussion with a senior software engineer who talked about the new Multi-System group, the role, responsibilities, and learning opportunities for this internship, and then we discussed my Ph.D. project. I can't share more due to NDA. The second interview focused on C++ coding and algorithms, involving a code-along exercise with graphs and a suitable traversal technique. The problem was similar to Leetcode but needed some thought. The third interview was a general domain knowledge test that surprisingly included two more C++ coding exercises. The interviewer had a Ph.D. in Geometric computer vision. I think I messed up here, partly because I wasn't expecting C++ vector products and a nearest neighbor problem. Again, NDA prevents details. Importantly, none of the three C++ coding tasks required the code to actually compile and run; the assessment seemed to be more about my C++ skills, algorithms, and ability to think quickly under pressure. Both interviewers wanted simple function interfaces and basic data structures, but I overused modern C++ features like smart pointers, vectors, and classes.