SAN FRANCISCO — Anthony Levandowski, a former star Google and Uber engineer who helped pioneer self-driving cars, filed for bankruptcy protection on Wednesday after a court ordered him to pay $179 million to Google over a contract dispute.

The damages stemmed from an arbitration case between Google and Mr. Levandowski. The engineer had for years worked on self-driving cars at Google before leaving to create an autonomous vehicle start-up in 2016 and then later joining the ride-hailing giant Uber.

An arbitration panel had ruled in December that Mr. Levandowski and another colleague, Lior Ron, had engaged in unfair and deceptive practices by secretly poaching away Google colleagues to join the start-up. On Wednesday, a San Francisco County court confirmed the arbitration panel’s decision that Mr. Levandowski pay $179 million to Google.

In his filing for bankruptcy protection, Mr. Levandowski said he had $50 million to $100 million in personal assets, which would not be enough to pay the damages to Google.