Principal Engineer, Verification & Validation Lead

Motional•Pittsburgh, PA

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

We are seeking a Verification and Validation (V&V) Lead to spearhead efforts for the Perception subsystem of our autonomy stack. Reporting directly to the Head of Perception, this critical role is responsible for the full spectrum of efforts required to close the safety case for the perception subsystem, enabling our driverless commercial launch and subsequent product expansions. This hybrid role demands broad experience in the self-driving field, with specific competencies in: test engineering, systems and safety, data analytics and reporting, simulation technology, and leveraging AI for workload automation and insight generation. Success in this highly collaborative role also requires exceptional written and verbal communication, leadership, cross-team influence, and a consistent ability to prioritize work and deliver results.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in a STEM field (preferred).
Experience leading Verification and Validation (V&V) for a safety-critical product.
V&V experience specifically with a self-driving vehicle (strongly preferred).
General knowledge of the self-driving vehicle software stack.
Understanding the different types of simulation technologies used in autonomy development.
Expertise in creating and executing V&V test strategies.
Expertise in test set creation, test organization (tagging, requirements and deficiency linking), and structured reporting.
Strong understanding of how performance analysis informs risk assessment, and acts as the cornerstone for “go/no-go” decisions.
Understanding of basic descriptive statistics.
Proficiency in Python for light scripting, database queries, and automation.
Familiarity with common dashboarding software.
Familiarity with AI/Agentic coding tools to accelerate workloads.
Experience using common software tools such as version control (Git) and build automation (Buildkite, Jenkins).
Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Demonstrated ability in collaboration, leadership, innovation, and creativity.
A track record of reliability, trustworthiness, and delivering impact.
Ability to frame safety discussions within a grounded risk assessment framework.

Nice To Haves

Entrepreneurial experience or other evidence of being self-driven, adaptable, and results-oriented.
Patents or other evidence of innovation and creativity.

Responsibilities

Influence requirements from the perspective of problem understanding, covariate coverage, and testing capabilities/challenges.
Educate perception engineers and be a champion for V&V best practices.
Collaborate with autonomy and systems engineers to establish problem taxonomies and identify critical performance covariates.
Identify or define appropriate metrics.
Create dashboards and automate reporting.
Establish coverage targets and identify data/testing gaps.
Validate the test strategy and provide early feedback to developers.
Create actionable test plans involving a spectrum of test modalities.
Create critical tests as-needed, work cross-team to scale test creation to achieve coverage targets.
Understand the limitations of existing tools and simulation technologies and how they impact our coverage plans.
Advocate for engineering work to address testing and automation limitations.
Find creative ways to get the desired signals when a straightforward approach is deemed infeasible.
Be a bridge between Perception and the “Systems Readiness and Performance” organization.
Act as the primary point of contact between the organizations.
Advocate for, and adopt, common processes, technology, and terminology to ensure subsystem and system level evaluations work seamlessly together.
Ensure that we understand the system-level impact of a perception failure mode and communicate this effectively across the entire organization.