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 a hybrid work schedule and reports to the Director of Operations, Europe Lead |
You will:
- Transformational Leadership & Operations Vision: Define and drive the objectives for Germany’s operational strategy; transform operational effectiveness by developing scalable teams, tools, and methods; own end-to-end fleet health, vehicle availability, efficiency, and daily/weekly operational cadences across Waymo’s Germany operations.
- Holistic Safety Compliance and Accountability & Operational Resilience: Exercise end-to-end organizational accountability for safety standards, regulatory compliance (including autonomous vehicle operational permits and federal safety frameworks), and operational resilience, embedding a culture of safety and public trust across all German sites and partner networks.
- Operational Scaling Playbook & Transformation: Architect and deploy a repeatable "launch-to-scale" operating framework and infrastructure blueprint across new cities in Germany;
- Workforce, Vendor & Partner Operations Ecosystem: Build, lead, and scale Waymo’s Germany operations workforce across partners; establish operational governance, training programs, and SLA accountability to drive safety, service quality, and productivity on the ground.
- Policy and Regulatory Partnership: support regulatory teams in multiple workstreams and effectively represent Waymo in high stake external meetings with government stakeholders.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Align Germany’s regional operations with Global Product, Software/Hardware Engineering, Systems Safety, and Legal priorities; synthesize structured on-the-ground operational data (fleet reliability, failure modes, depot bottlenecks) so Engineering and Product teams can improve vehicle and platform performance.
- Executive Stewardship & People/Community Leadership: Oversee regional ride-hailing fleet supply execution to meet ride-hailing demand resource allocation, and budget to maximize long-term operational efficiency; actively nurture the regional and regional Operations talent talent pipeline, build and mentor high-performing leadership pipeline, and champion enterprise-wide operational citizenship.
You have:
- Transformational Operational Leadership: 15+ years of experience leading large-scope, multi-facility operations, technology deployment, logistics, or transportation systems at an executive or senior program management level.
- Germany & European Market Entry in automotive or mobility industry: Proven track record of launching, scaling, and transforming complex operations within Germany, demonstrating experience working closely with local labor law aspects (Works Councils), municipal infrastructure, and commercial expansion.
- Safety-Critical Execution & Regulatory Compliance: Recognized expertise navigating operational compliance and safety standards within German/EU regulatory frameworks, managing safety-critical operational environments, and establishing operational risk governance.
- Cross-Functional Problem Solving & Leadership: Demonstrated success setting operational vision, establishing executive governance mechanisms, driving large-scale change management, and designing metrics frameworks that transform organizational effectiveness. Ability to collaborate seamlessly with Strategy/BizOps, TPM, Product, Engineering, and Policy teams to deliver world-class physical operations.
- Strategic Product & Technical Partnership: Proven capability to partner as a peer with Engineering, and Product teams to integrate complex autonomous hardware/software platforms and tools into live depot and field operations while balancing velocity, safety, and quality.
- Resource Forecasting, Cost Acumen & Talent Development: Demonstrated track record of strategic multi-million-euro budget management, driving unit-cost and productivity improvements, and successfully developing future organizational leaders.
- Language Proficiency: Professional working fluency in German and English.
We prefer:
- Advanced Education: Master’s degree, MBA, or advanced degree in Engineering, Operations Research, Logistics, or related technical field.
- Multi-Market European Scaling: Experience leading multi-city, cross-border operational rollouts and establishing international operating blueprints.
- Operational Excellence: Master Black Belt / Lean Six Sigma certification or equivalent mastery in systems design, continuous improvement, and operational transformation.
Travel:
- 40% within Germany, 2-3 a year internationally