Principal Engineer Team Lead, AV Behavior
About the role
Motional is a leading autonomous driving company focused on making driverless vehicles a safe, reliable, and accessible reality. We are part of Hyundai Motor Group and are at the forefront of the physical AI revolution. We are transforming transportation to create safer streets and more sustainable mobility options.
Responsibilities
Design the System Behavior: Decompose ODD requirements into system and subsystem behaviors and interfaces to ensure vehicle capabilities meet product requirements.
Characterize the performance target against parameters used to define AV capabilities to provide nuance in performance evaluation.
Develop actionable policies and measurable targets: Convert legal and industry policy narratives to mathematical and/or specific requirements that the autonomy teams can implement. Leverage human benchmark and industry standards to establish measurable acceptance criteria for system readiness.
Drive Evaluation Strategy: Advance our performance assessment framework by defining key metrics and reward functions. Derive Launch Criteria and Driving policy and strategically plan and execute testing campaigns leveraging advanced structured and large scale simulation, closed-course tracks, and on-road data.
Lead and Scale: Mentor and grow a high-performing engineering team. Foster a culture of technical excellence, scientific rigor, and data-driven decision-making.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Autonomy, Infrastructure, and the other Systems teams to drive design improvements. Ensure features generate a net positive effect on system safety, comfort, and assertiveness and meet our launch criteria.
Data exploration: Leverage data science techniques and existing infrastructure to understand the problem space and engage with development teams to drive resolution in close collaboration with System Performance.
Incorporate Bleeding Edge technology: Leverage a combination of learning methods and metrics along with classical metrics to stretch the horizon of performance evaluation.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree and 7+ years of experience in Systems Engineering, Autonomous Systems, or Robotics, with deep expertise in one and working knowledge of the others.
- Or Master’s degree/PhD and 5+ years of experience.
- 3+ years of experience leading and scaling data-driven evaluation programs for autonomous driving or safety-critical emerging technologies.
- A hands-on technical leader with a proven track record of growing small, high-performing teams.
- Demonstrated track record in decomposing ODD requirements into vehicle capabilities, driving behavior logic, and defining measurable acceptance criteria.
- Expert at leveraging large-scale simulation, track, and road data to extract actionable technical insights that drive resolution with development teams.
- Proven track record of building consensus and driving alignment across multidisciplinary teams—spanning Autonomy, Infrastructure, and Operations—by leveraging technical influence over organizational authority.
- Strong foundation in statistical methodology, Data Science, and scientific rigor.
- Proficiency in Python, SQL, and data visualization techniques.
- Excellent communication skills; capable of articulating complex concepts to technical peers and executive leadership alike.
- Self-starter with a proactive mindset for driving ambiguous projects to completion.
Qualifications
- Master’s degree in Systems Engineering, Autonomous Systems, or Robotics.
- Familiarity with SOTIF, ISO 26262, UL4600, AVSC Behavior competencies and other industry standards.
- Experience shaping product roadmaps.
- Experience establishing and leveraging industry benchmarks as well as human naturalistic driving behaviors to improve autonomous driving.
- Familiarity with Reinforcement Learning (RL).
- Experience collaborating within agile environments and global, distributed teams.
- Experience with Industry standards and establishing human benchmarks.
Skills
- Systems Engineering
- Autonomous Systems
- Robotics
- Data Science
- Python
- SQL
- Reinforcement Learning
- Agile Methodologies
- Collaboration Across Disciplines
Benefits
Motional offers a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, 401k with a company match, health savings accounts, life insurance, pet insurance, and more. The salary range for this role is $200,000 USD - $275,000 USD. Motional is an Equal Opportunity Employer and is committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.
Pay
The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a wide range of compensation factors including but not limited to specific skills, experience and expertise, role location, certifications, licenses, and business needs.
Schedule
This role can be fully remote or supported with in-office time at one of our locations in Boston, Pittsburgh, or Las Vegas to support collaboration.