Staff Engineer Team Lead, Simulation Infrastructure - Release

Motional•Las Vegas, NV

21d•Hybrid

About The Position

Motional is at the forefront of the driverless revolution. We are seeking a Staff Engineer Team Lead to grow and lead our Release team, specializing in Software Release and Validation. 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 play a vital part in realizing product improvements by managing the complex intersection of software builds, triage, and large-scale simulation-based validation. 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 working cross-functionally across the entire organization.

Requirements

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

Nice To Haves

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.

Responsibilities

Define, enforce code and execute promotion policies, branching strategies (e.g., Trunk-Based vs. Gitflow), and release lifecycles to ensure release isolation and stability.
Drive shift-left quality initiatives by specifying and generating automated tests across all pipeline stages, ensuring quality is integrated throughout the release lifecycle rather than retrofitted.
Audit, unify, and standardize release documentation and governance workflows across the organization to eliminate tribal knowledge and empower the broader engineering organization.
Oversee the evolution and content in all release pipelines stages to minimize branch breakages and increase release quality.
Improve visibility into release metrics, ensuring stakeholders and leadership have the necessary data for rapid, informed decision-making.
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.
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.
Audit and resolve discrepancies between mainline and active release branches.
Enforce a "Mainline First" policy to reduce technical debt and manual cherry-picking.
Develop and iterate on robust, gated testing to ensure main-branch stability, preventing the need for complex, fragmented branching models.