Director, Onboard Core Software

Location: Boston, Massachusetts, United States; Las Vegas, Nevada, United States; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States; Remote U.S.

Department: Infrastructure

Motional is at the forefront of the driverless revolution. We are looking for a Director of Onboard Core Software to lead the teams that deliver the software foundation Motionals products are built on: embedded firmware, the operating system, the runtime, and middleware on the vehicles various computing platforms. You will own the onboard software infrastructure end to end and lead the teams responsible for it.

The ideal candidate has hands-on experience with systems software on physical hardware and has led engineering organizations with several levels of management. You should be comfortable owning a large area that spans many teams, taking on problems that arent well defined yet, and working out boundaries directly with other organizations.

Mission Summary:

As the Director of Onboard Core Software, you will lead the strategic vision and execution for the software foundation of Motionals autonomous vehicles, from embedded firmware through the operating system, runtime, and middleware. This leadership role is centered on establishing a single roadmap, intake process, and escalation path for the onboard stack, and serving as the primary engineering counterpart to Vehicle Platform Engineering, Autonomy, and Safety for everything that runs on the vehicles compute platform. You will keep the current-generation platform healthy in production while building the next-generation platform program. You will own cross-cutting system behaviors such as startup sequencing, storage lifecycle, compute, ECU bring-up, and cross-layer latency to ensure the platform performs safely and reliably, and that the entire product is a delight for our customers, from the autonomy features that drive the vehicle to the customer-facing features riders experience in our cars.

What Youll Be Doing:

• Stack Ownership: Own the onboard software stack from firmware through middleware. That includes software on embedded platforms including SoCs, safety MCUs, and GPU compute; the operating systems, drivers, and interfaces to the physical world; task runtime and compute resource management; system health monitoring; and safety and diagnostics software.
• Organizational Leadership: Lead and develop a team of engineering managers and technical leaders. You own hiring, leveling, performance, and career growth for the group, and you will build leaders who can run their teams autonomously.
• Cross-Functional Accountability: Be the main contact for onboard software for stakeholder and partner teams. You will settle boundary questions between organizations, run intake and prioritization, and handle escalations when your teams’ software is on the critical path.
• Delivering Quality: Define what done means for onboard software at each release, including quality metrics to ensure delivery of a safe and reliable product.
  
  

What Were Looking For:

• Education: BS or MS in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent knowledge and work experience.
• Experience: 12+ years of software engineering experience, including 5+ years leading organizations of 40 or more engineers as a manager of managers. This should be in a field where software runs on physical hardware, such as automotive, robotics, aerospace, or consumer devices.
• Systems Software Depth: Hands-on experience building, or leading teams that built, embedded firmware, Linux kernel or BSP software, real-time middleware, or high-performance runtimes. You can talk through boot sequencing, IPC latency, or resource scheduling with Principal Engineers.
• Production Operations: Experience running software in production on a fleet or in the field, including keeping a current platform healthy while bringing up the next one.
• Technical Leadership: Experience hiring, developing, and retaining talent as an organization grows.
• Cross-Organizational Ownership: Experience owning a large area that spans many teams. You build trust with peer organizations, work out boundaries directly, and make decisions people follow.
• Communication: Clear writing and speaking. You can explain technical tradeoffs to executives, peers, and engineers across your team and others.
• Inclusive Leadership: Experience building inclusive teams and making room for people with different working styles, ideas, and backgrounds.
• Engineering Rigor: Ability to set and hold the team to high standards for engineering quality.
  
  

Bonus Points (Not Required):

• Experience with functional safety in automotive (ISO 26262, safety MCUs, safety monitors, diagnostics), or working closely with a safety organization on requirements and designs for safety-critical/regulated environments.
• Experience with high-performance, high-bandwidth, low-latency systems, such as moving large amounts of data across numerous subsystems with tight timing requirements.
• Familiarity with physical AI ecosystems, where machine learning models sense and act in the real world. That includes how those models run on embedded compute, how they depend on sensors and the onboard runtime, and how on-road and simulation data is used to train and evaluate them.
• Experience in the autonomous vehicle or robotaxi industry.

We encourage a hybrid schedule with in-office time at one of our locations in Boston, Pittsburgh, or Las Vegas to support collaboration, or this role can be fully remote.

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