Senior Virtual Cloud Engineer (MUST HAVE Android Cuttlefish and QEMU); automotive experience

Volkswagen AG • Belmont, CA

41d • $159,000 - $286,200 • Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior Virtual Cloud Engineer leads the creation and cloud deployment of a virtual Android Automotive (AAOS) infotainment ECU. The role designs a high-fidelity virtual representation of the head-unit software stack and hosts it in the cloud so engineering teams across Volkswagen Group brands and regions can develop against it on demand without physical hardware. The engineer transforms a physical infotainment ECU into a scalable, globally accessible service and coordinates brands, suppliers, platform providers, and partners, including the RV Tech (Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies) joint venture.

The role is part of the worldwide connectivity technical team and interfaces with stakeholders across the Volkswagen Group technical organization. It investigates and contributes to new architectures for connected systems targeted to the US market. This is a hybrid position in Belmont, California; candidates who are not local must be open to relocation. The position requires accommodating international time-zone differences, a flexible daily schedule, and an estimated 10% travel, including regular visits to local development teams and partners less than 20 miles from the work location.

Requirements

• 8–10+ years of software, cloud, or virtualization engineering experience, including deep hands-on experience building and operating virtual devices on Cuttlefish and QEMU; ideally in infotainment or connectivity functions at a vehicle manufacturer or supplier.
• Demonstrated experience leading platform efforts and coordinating across teams and partners.
• Bachelor of Science in Engineering.
• Extensive hands-on experience with Android Cuttlefish and QEMU and supporting virtualization technologies (crosvm, KVM, virtio, and AVD/Android Emulator) to build and operate virtual devices.
• Strong background in Android Automotive OS (AAOS) and/or Linux or QNX infotainment software stacks.
• Cloud engineering experience at scale, including Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, a major cloud provider (AWS or Google Cloud), and observability.
• Working knowledge of in-vehicle connectivity (Automotive Ethernet/SOME/IP, CAN/CAN-FD, DoIP/UDS) sufficient to virtualize and validate it.
• Track record of leading technical efforts and coordinating across software, cloud, manufacturing, and supplier teams.
• Proficiency in C/C++ and Python, with familiarity in Java.
• Excellent communication, coordination, and negotiation skills.
• Analytical and conceptual thinking, a strategic and visionary mindset, interpersonal, presentation, and written communication skills, integration skills, and cross-functional leadership and negotiation skills.
• Ability to accommodate international time-zone differences and a flexible daily schedule, including early morning meetings with Europe and afternoon/evening meetings for the US West Coast or Asia.
• Availability for estimated 10% travel and regular travel to local development teams and partners less than 20 miles from the work location.
• If not local to Belmont, California, openness to relocation.

Nice To Haves

• Experience scaling Cuttlefish or QEMU virtual devices across Kubernetes-based farms with observability tools such as OpenTelemetry, ELK, or Grafana.
• Contributions to AOSP or Cuttlefish, or experience extending QEMU/crosvm device models and ARM/aarch64 system emulation.
• Qualcomm VSOC (Virtual System-on-Chip) experience; advantageous but not required.
• Experience validating security within virtual environments, including SecOC and TLS/mTLS.
• Familiarity with the RV Tech SDV/zonal architecture and Volkswagen Group product requirements.
• Familiarity with automotive validation and coverage tooling as a complement to the platform.
• Master’s and/or PhD in Engineering.

Responsibilities

• Lead the virtualization strategy for the AAOS infotainment ECU, building configurable virtual devices on Android Cuttlefish and QEMU with crosvm, KVM, virtio, and AVD/Android Emulator to reproduce the production head-unit software stack and boot sequence.
• Define hardware and HAL abstraction, virtio-backed virtual peripherals (display, audio, touch, GNSS, and modem), and timing and determinism controls to maintain fidelity with physical hardware.
• Model the in-vehicle environment, including Automotive Ethernet, SOME/IP, and CAN, so the virtual ECU behaves as it would in a vehicle.
• Lead a cloud platform hosting virtual ECUs at scale, containerized and orchestrated with Docker and Kubernetes on AWS or Google Cloud, with on-demand instances and remote access for distributed teams.
• Integrate CI/CD pipelines so software builds deploy automatically onto cloud-hosted virtual ECUs, and establish observability, artifact management, and capacity planning for the virtual-device fleet.
• Coordinate with Volkswagen Group brands, Tier 1/2 suppliers, platform providers, and the RV Tech joint venture to align virtual-ECU requirements and adoption; lead technical discussions and negotiations.
• Serve as the team’s principal technical reference for ECU virtualization and cloud delivery, mentor engineers, and establish best practices.
• Ensure the virtual platform supports software validation, including communication bring-up (SOME/IP, DoIP, UDS), diagnostics, and automated test execution, to identify defects earlier than on HIL or in-vehicle.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior