Staff Engineer Team Lead, Simulation Infrastructure - Release

Motional is at the forefront of the driverless revolution, developing autonomous vehicles to make transportation safer, more reliable, and accessible. We’re seeking a Staff Engineer Team Lead to grow and lead our Release team, specializing in Software Release and Validation.

About the Role

In this critical role, you will be the technical and team leader responsible for designing, building, and deploying the infrastructure that ensures safe and reliable software releases across our autonomous vehicle fleet. You will manage the complex intersection of software builds, triage, and large-scale simulation-based validation, playing a vital part in realizing product improvements.

The ideal candidate has a deep technical background in both release engineering and autonomous vehicle technologies, combined with a proven track record of leading and mentoring engineering teams. You should be able to work independently, taking ownership of large, vaguely defined problems while collaborating cross-functionally across the organization.

Strategic Impact

• Release Strategy & Architecture: Drive the organizational strategy for release management. Evaluate and optimize branching paradigms (e.g., Trunk-Based vs. Gitflow) to balance developer velocity with release stability.
• Divergence Resolution: Audit and resolve discrepancies between mainline and active release branches. Enforce a "Mainline First" policy to reduce technical debt and manual cherry-picking.
• Continuous Improvement: Develop and iterate on robust, gated testing to ensure main-branch stability, preventing the need for complex, fragmented branching models.

Responsibilities

• Release Governance & Strategic Architecture: Define, enforce, and execute code promotion policies, branching strategies (e.g., Trunk-Based vs. Gitflow), and release lifecycles to ensure release isolation and stability.
• Shift-Left Quality Leadership: Drive shift-left quality initiatives by specifying and generating automated tests across all pipeline stages, ensuring quality is integrated throughout the release lifecycle.
• Release Process Standardization: Audit, unify, and standardize release documentation and governance workflows across the organization to eliminate tribal knowledge and empower the broader engineering organization.
• Release Validation & Gating: Oversee the evolution and content in all release pipeline stages to minimize branch breakages and increase release quality. Improve visibility into release metrics for stakeholders and leadership.
• Cross-Functional Integration: Collaborate with Autonomy teams to seamlessly and safely integrate necessary fast-forward patches into release branches. Proactively manage and mitigate technical risks associated with software deployment and build compatibility.

Requirements

• Experience: 5+ years of professional experience in the autonomous driving or robotics industry, specifically within release engineering or simulation.
• Autonomy Expertise: Strong understanding of autonomy systems, including Localization, Perception, Prediction, Planning, Control, and Autonomy Platforms.
• Technical Leadership: Experience working on and leading large-scale cross-functional projects and managing engineering teams.
• Engineering Foundation: BS or MS in Engineering or equivalent knowledge and work experience.
• Programming Proficiency: Proficiency with C++/Python and advanced experience with CI/CD pipelines.
• Problem-Solving Skills: Demonstrated ability to think logically, remove bias from problem evaluation, and data mine for insights on deficiencies and overlooked optimizations.
• Collaboration: Strong teamwork, communication, presentation, and writing skills for working with developers, program managers, and leadership.
• Strategic Problem Solving: Proven ability to navigate complex engineering debates (e.g., Trunk-Based vs. Gitflow), provide data-driven recommendations, and lead architectural shifts.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Cloud Simulation scaling and cost analysis.
• Experience with Apache Airflow.
• Experience with Applied Intuition simulation tooling.
• Experience with scaled AWS applications and environments.

Schedule

This role is hybrid from our Pittsburgh or Las Vegas office and requires in-office days each week.

Pay

The salary range for this role is $172,000 USD - $229,000 USD. This range is based on a wide range of compensation factors including specific skills, experience, expertise, role location, certifications, licenses, and business needs. Additional forms of compensation such as a bonus or company equity may be included. The recruiter assigned to this role can share more information about specific compensation and benefit details during the hiring process.

Benefits

Candidates for this position are eligible to participate in Motional’s benefits program, which includes but is not limited to:

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage
• 401k with a company match
• Health savings accounts
• Life insurance
• Pet insurance
• And more