# Hotsuyuki Kawanishi

> Software Engineer at Waymo

Location: Mountain View, California, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/hotsuyuki

Software Engineer at Waymo

## Work Experience
### Software Engineer, Self-Driving Car - Perception @ Waymo
Jan 2026 – Present | Mountain View, California, United States

### Software Engineer Intern, Self-Driving Car - Perception @ Waymo
Jan 2025 – Jan 2025 | Mountain View, California, United States
Keywords: Python, C++, Perception

* Improved the performance (PR curves and mIoUs) of the lidar semantic segmentation task, which is one of the main tasks of a multimodal perception model, by inputting noise point cloud in addition to non-noise point cloud and co-training the model with a noise-aware auxiliary task alongside the main tasks. The ML frameworks used were TensorFlow and JAX in Python.

### Machine Learning Engineer, LLM @ Matsuo-Iwasawa Lab U-Tokyo
Jan 2024 – Jan 2024 | Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Keywords: Python, Pre-training, Fine-tuning, Distributed Systems

* Rapidly acquired necessary expertise in LLM within 1 month despite working full-time in a different field (Self-Driving Car), and built an LLM distributed training pipeline with PyTorch, Microsoft DeepSpeed, and Hugging Face Transformers in Python, achieving successful training of a GPT-based 10B generative model on 160 Nvidia H100 GPUs via Google Cloud GPU cluster.

* Led a lecture on pre-training in an online LLM course with 4,000+ participants, accomplishing the highest Net Promoter Score (except guest lectures).

### Software Engineer, Self-Driving Car - Motion Planning @ Woven by Toyota
Jan 2021 – Jan 2024 | Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Keywords: C++, Python, Prediction, Motion Planning

* Decreased driver interventions in JP by 30% by debugging the trajectory planning modules in C++ with teams in the US, e.g. triaging log data, identifying root causes on large C++ codebases, articulating solutions, and managing vehicle experiments.

* Streamlined simulation scenario generation process for the motion planning team by 3x efficiency by creating automation scripts in Python that leverage Applied Intuition API and by leading cross-functional collaboration with teams in the US.

* Enhanced safety validation for Level 4 driverless autonomous vehicles by designing and implementing a prediction evaluator in C++ with software development life cycle best practices, e.g. object-oriented design, code standards, code reviews, and testing.

### Research Engineer, Self-Driving Car - Perception @ Kanazawa University Advanced Mobility Research Institute
Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 | Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan
Keywords: C++, Python, Localization & Mapping, Perception

* Developed perception features in C++ by applying research theories to practical applications in a fast-paced culture, including a speed bump detector using lidar point cloud and probabilistic approaches (successfully delivered to a customer company) and a lane line visibility checker using lidar-camera sensor fusion and linear algebra (published in an international journal paper).

* Improved map data collection process for autonomous vehicles by 2x efficiency by creating a real-time mapping tool in C++.

* Mentored 4 lab students, resulting in 1 paper publication at IEEE IV and 1 patent filing, by providing hands-on guidance.

### Software Engineer Intern, Web @ Cultural Vistas
Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | Manhattan, New York, United States
Keywords: JavaScript, PHP, SQL, Relational Database, Full-stack

* Developed and maintained the web front-end and back-end in a diverse, multicultural environment of 5 software engineers.


## Education
### Master of Science - M.S. in Software Engineering
University of Miami

### Master of Engineering - M.Eng. in Robotics
Kanazawa University

### Bachelor of Engineering - B.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering
千葉大学 Chiba University

### Associate of Engineering - A.Eng. in Computer Science
Numazu National College of Technology


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/hotsuyuki
- Portfolio: https://hotsuyuki.github.io/

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Source: https://flows.cv/hotsuyuki
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/hotsuyuki/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-04-11