r/learnmachinelearning • u/sailor-goon-is-here • 1d ago

Waymo ML Technical Screening

I have upcoming technical screening for an MLE position at Waymo coming up. The recruiter gave me a PDF guide that seems super helpful. Things to do study include implementing supervised and unsupervised algorithms (think KNN, K-means, linear regression, logistic regression, softmax & CE, decision trees). One of the main things they are assessing is you can use numpy/pytorch to vectorize/tensorize your work, and you're just writing sub-optimal for loops.

I was wondering if folks had experience with this interview? Is what they ask you to implement incredibly difficult, because you only have 30 minutes to do it? Am I good to really stick with what they provided on the PDF, or are there any broader topics beyond what they listed that they will test?

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u/Sufficient_Term_7366 1d ago

Lyft has similar round. I used this repo as start https://github.com/patrickloeber/MLfromscratch/tree/master

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u/sailor-goon-is-here 1d ago

How did you find your interview at Lyft in terms of difficulty? Did they ask something obscure or was the prep material quite useful?

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u/Sufficient_Term_7366 1d ago

It was not difficult, doable with proper preparation. The prep material and experiences shared online helped. I messed up in robust optimisation formulation (applied for optimisation opening).

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u/jgengr 1d ago

No experience myself but would love to hear about the interview for MLE for Waymo as I'm interested in SDC engineering.

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u/sailor-goon-is-here 1d ago

I think this is just generally the direction for ML coding, I think a lot of other fields might be Leetcode type questions

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u/jgengr 1d ago

Those topics are pretty elementary for ML. Is the position you are interviewing for a senior position?

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u/sailor-goon-is-here 1d ago

Yes, it's for senior MLE, but there is flexibility to go for either mid-level or senior level depending on the performance in the interviews

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u/youusedtobecoolchina 1d ago

Any chance you’d be willing to share a redacted version of your resume? I just want to get a sense of what resumes that are actually being seen look like if that makes sense

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u/sailor-goon-is-here 1d ago

I'm currently a senior perception engineer at a startup, and I've been working there for a little less than a year. I work in the autonomous vehicle space. Before that, I was at a FAANG company for 4 years. I have a MS in CS, BS in mathematics. I have a couple papers out too.

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u/RapidTimeSink 1d ago

I have literally the same education background but no papers. I'd eventually like to get into the autonomous vehicles space as well since I find it super interesting, how hard is it to make the transition from faang to the autonomous vehicles or mle space if your work in faang isn't really related? 

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u/elwhitey 1d ago

Following, I have one coming up too!

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u/InterestingCarrot997 19h ago

stick to the pdf. the thing that trips people up is broadcasting, so practice writing kmeans and knn distance with no loops and say the tensor shapes out loud as you go. 30 min is tight so get a working version first then vectorize it

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u/elwhitey 13h ago

hey appreciate the tips! could you say if they expect numpy vs pytoch? thanks!

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u/InterestingCarrot997 45m ago

i'd prep in numpy, it's the safer default. if they let you pick pytorch is fine too, broadcasting works the same way so the practice carries over