The role
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.
As part of Waymo's Legal team, you will work on the exciting legal issues surrounding our transformational autonomous driving technology and help drive our business lines forward from technology ideation through scaled commercial deployment. We partner with our public policy, safety, security and privacy experts to define transportation policy for the autonomous driving world to come, advising on regulatory changes that support and protect our users around the world. We collaborate with our engineering, product, strategy and operations teams to develop and protect our intellectual property portfolio and drive our corporate and commercial transactions. We ensure compliance with an increasingly complex and dynamic range of global regulations. And we anticipate, mitigate, and litigate high-profile and precedent-setting legal matters.
In this hybrid role, you will report into our Managing Counsel.
You will:
- Serve as the primary, on-the-ground Privacy Counsel for Waymo's operations, product launches, and engineering initiatives across Germany and the broader EU, acting as a trusted advisor to ensure compliance with GDPR, ePrivacy, and local laws like the BDSG.
- Advise on "Privacy by Design" and data minimization principles for European market entry, working directly with Product, Engineering, and AI/ML teams to design innovative privacy solutions for complex sensor data and model training.
- Proactively build and maintain constructive relationships with EU Data Protection Authorities (DPAs), acting as the primary legal contact for regulatory inquiries, data protection impact assessments (DPIAs), audits, and ongoing local engagement.
- Lead rapid, localized legal response for any EU data incidents, coordinating internal investigations and compliance reviews, managing strict notification timelines, and mitigating regulatory risk.
- Partner with Waymo’s Public Policy, Trust & Safety, and Regulatory Affairs teams to monitor, review, and help shape emerging European privacy legislation, developing advocacy strategies to influence policy changes that support responsible innovation.
You have:
- A Juris Doctor (or equivalent law degree) and active qualification to practice law in Germany (e.g., Volljurist) or another relevant EU jurisdiction.
- 7+ years of legal experience with significant expertise in European privacy, data protection, and regulatory compliance, preferably in-house at a global technology company.
- Deep, practical expertise in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and German national data protection laws (BDSG), with a track record of operationalizing these frameworks for complex data flows.
- Direct experience engaging with European Data Protection Authorities (DPAs) and working with government or regulatory bodies to navigate rulemaking processes and compliance readiness.
- Experience advising on cross-border data transfers, international data governance, and translating strict legal requirements into practical engineering specifications.
- Professional fluency in both German and English, with exceptional ability to communicate legal risks clearly to leadership and technical teams in the face of ambiguity.
We prefer:
- Recognized European privacy certifications, such as CIPP/E, CIPM, or CIPT.
- Prior in-house experience at a US-based multinational technology company, autonomous vehicle developer, or AI-focused enterprise navigating EU expansion.
- Hands-on experience advising on the intersection of GDPR with emerging European technology and data regulations (e.g., the AI Act, Data Act), including experience providing counsel on proposed legislation.
- Experience structuring and defending main establishment strategies (One-Stop-Shop) and data transfer frameworks for EU resident data.
- Background in responding to privacy litigation, localized incident response, or managing comprehensive privacy compliance audits.
- A technical background or strong fluency in data infrastructure, cloud computing, computer vision, or software engineering.