[Hiring] Staff Software Engineer @Motional

Role Description

Motional is a leading autonomous driving company on a mission to make driverless vehicles a safe, reliable, and accessible reality. The Systems Readiness and Performance team is the crucial bridge between software development and real-world deployment. We are responsible for driving system design, verifying and validating the autonomy stack, and defining, measuring, and validating system performance targets.

We are seeking a highly skilled Software Engineer to play a critical role in evaluating and improving the performance of our autonomous vehicle (AV) technology. This engineer will be responsible for developing and implementing metrics and software tools, primarily using Python, to effectively measure, analyze, and report on the performance of our AV systems.

What You'll Be Doing

• Drive Technical Strategy & Roadmap: Define a long-term, high-impact technical roadmap for the team, working closely with leadership and product managers.
• Design AV Performance Analysis Pipelines: Define, design, and implement key pipelines to extract on-road and simulated events and evaluate autonomous vehicle performance.
• Develop Metrics Software and AI-Powered Tools: Leverage strong Python skills to develop frameworks, AI-powered tools, and systems for calculating, aggregating, and visualizing AV performance metrics.
• Collaborate & Influence Cross-Functionally: Proactively partner across systems, software, AI, controls, simulation, and validation teams.
• Ensure Exceptional Data Quality & Reliability: Hold yourself and the team accountable to a high bar for quality and reliability.
• Document and Share Knowledge: Create clear documentation for metrics and analysis tools, and share best practices with the engineering team.
• Advance Technical Expertise: Proactively evaluate and integrate new technologies and methodologies relevant to autonomous vehicles and software engineering.
• Provide Technical Thought Leadership & Mentorship: Act as a role model and mentor to Senior Engineers and team members.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience and a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field; a Master's degree is a plus.
• Expert-level proficiency in Python and a strong understanding of modern software development principles and best practices.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, particularly in the context of complex system performance evaluation and data analysis.
• Proficient with Git and standard version control workflows.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• Proven ability to work both independently and effectively as part of a multidisciplinary team.
• Strong attention to detail and a commitment to data quality, accuracy, and rigorous testing.
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced, agile, continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) environment.

Requirements

• Experience working in software development of autonomous vehicles, or robotics (bonus).
• Experience in perception, prediction, planning, or controls (bonus).
• Experience with Python data analysis & visualization tools (e.g., Pandas, matplotlib, seaborn, Jupyter notebooks) for early data analysis & validation (bonus).
• Knowledge of statistical analysis and machine learning techniques relevant to performance evaluation (bonus).

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision insurance.
• 401k with a company match.
• Health saving accounts.
• Life insurance.
• Pet insurance.
• And more.

Salary Range

$172,000 — $229,000 USD

Physical Demands

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is frequently required to sit, talk, or hear. The employee is occasionally required to stand and at times for long periods; walk; use hands to finger, handle, or feel; reach with hands and arms. The employee must occasionally lift and move up to 50 pounds.

Travel Requirements

Expected to travel for 1-2 weeks each quarter visiting all of our testing sites - mostly to LV, but also domestically as needed for the business.

Working Environment

The work environment characteristics described here represent those a team member encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. The team member is regularly exposed to mechanical and computer parts. The team member is occasionally exposed to fumes and/or airborne particles. The noise level in the environment is low to moderate.