Apple Hires Former Waymo Senior Engineer Jaime Waydo For Its Self-Driving Project

According to The Information , Jaime Waydo, a former senior engineer at Google’s subsidiary Waymo, has joined Apple. An Apple spokesperson c...

According to The Information, Jaime Waydo, a former senior engineer at Google’s subsidiary Waymo, has joined Apple. An Apple spokesperson confirmed the news but declined to disclose what self-driving project she was responsible for.

Apple has hired a high-profile senior engineer of Alphabet’s Waymo self-driving vehicle unit, Jaime Waydo, to join the iPhone maker’s own self-driving vehicle project, known as Titan, according to a person briefed about the move.

In an interview with The Information, Waydo’s former colleague stated that Waydo’s position as director of system engineering at Waymo was "instrumental" for the entire company. She is primarily responsible for verifying the safety of the Waymo prototypes.

Prior to joining Waymo, Waydo worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for more than 10 years, where she helped Akai in the lab to drive a rover on Mars. So it’s likely that Apple has hired Waydo for the purpose of advancing its driverless car program and plans to build a prototype.

However, Apple's self-driving project still faces various difficulties, as its internal teams lack communication. Apple's initial self-driving plan was to release a fully-autonomous, driverless car and then shift its focus to self-driving software to licensing them to other companies.