Staff Engineer, Team Lead - Core Infrastructure

Motional is at the forefront of the driverless revolution. We are looking for a Staff Engineer, Team Lead for Core Infra Test and Support Engineering to build and lead the team that tests Motional's software platform and supports it once it is running. You will own platform-level test and support for the Core Infrastructure team, and you will build up a team who do that work.

The ideal candidate has hands-on experience testing or supporting systems software on physical hardware, and has led a team of engineers. You should be comfortable building a team, setting the technical direction, and working out boundaries directly with the teams that own the vehicle software and the test infrastructure.

Mission Summary:

As the Staff Engineer, Team Lead for Core Infra Test and Support Engineering, you will build the team that finds platform problems before they reach the fleet, and that responds when something breaks in the fleet, on test benches, in simulation, or on the release path. You will set the plan for stress, fault injection, and regression tests of the core platform software, and for pulling integration tests other teams wrote into suites that run together. You will also put an on-call rotation, triage, and vehicle and release enablement in place to support the customer-facing products and services of our team.

What You'll Be Doing:

• Platform Test: Own software platform-level test suites, and the work of combining and improving integration tests other teams wrote so they run as one suite. Run release qualification, regression, and bring-up campaigns on HIL, SIL, and vehicle setups.
• Production Support: Own on-call for onboard core software on the car and for the services supported by our team including software deployment and vehicle data ingestion.
• Team Leadership: Hire and develop this team. You own priorities, performance, and career growth for the people on it. You will stay close enough to the tests and the incident queue to hold the bar, and you will build leads who can run a slice of the work on their own.
• Cross-Functional Accountability: Be the contact for platform test results and for Core Infra support. You’ll work closely with teams across engineering and operations.

What We're Looking For:

• Education: BS or MS in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent knowledge and work experience.
• Experience: 10+ years of software engineering experience, including time leading a team of engineers. This should be in a field where software runs on physical hardware, or on the infrastructure used to build and operate it, such as automotive, robotics, aerospace, or large device fleets.
• Test or Support Depth: You have owned platform or system-level testing (stress, fault injection, integration suites, release campaigns) or production support (on-call, incident triage, postmortems) for software other teams depend on.
• Systems Context: Enough depth in embedded software, Linux, middleware, or test and release infrastructure to tell a product defect from a bench or test problem, and to work with the engineers who own those layers.
• Production Operations: Experience with software in production on a fleet or in the field, including on-call, bring-up, and releasing software and/or hardware products.
• Technical Leadership: Experience hiring, developing, and retaining engineers, including building a team or a rotation.
• Inclusive Leadership: Experience building inclusive teams and making room for people with different working styles, ideas, and backgrounds.

Bonus Points (Not Required):

• Experience with functional safety in automotive (ISO 26262 or similar), including using test results as verification evidence against requirements.
• Experience building an on-call and incident program for a fleet or a shared platform, including runbooks, response plans
• Hands-on experience with hardware-in-the-loop, software-in-the-loop, or simulation infrastructure, as someone who has run test campaigns on it or written requirements for it.
• Experience in the autonomous vehicle or robotaxi industry.

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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. The estimated compensation range listed in this job posting reflects base salary only. This role may include additional forms of compensation such as a bonus or company equity. The recruiter assigned to this role can share more information about the specific compensation and benefit details associated with this role during the hiring process.

Salary Range