Staff IVI Simulation & Tooling Engineer

Drivemode•Mountain View, CA

4d•Onsite

About The Position

Drivemode is a California-based division of Honda Motor Co., Ltd., focused on building application experiences for mobile devices to make Honda Automotive competitive in the Electric Vehicle market. We are seeking an experienced Staff Software Engineer generalist to join the Drivemode IVI Team as a foundational member. The goal is to assist Honda in delivering software modules and tools for IVI initiatives, developing technical roadmaps, leading their implementation, and setting up developer tools, environments, and validation approaches for current and future Honda vehicles. The ideal candidate will have a strong sense of ownership, experience with state-of-the-art IVI approaches, and enthusiasm for new technologies like cloud-based virtualization and Agentic AI. This role offers an opportunity to be a foundational member of a new team focused on building "shift left" tooling around a cloud-based virtual simulator for the Digital Cockpit/Cabin. Close interaction with Honda counterparts in Japan is expected.

Requirements

Minimum 10 years of experience in HMI vehicle software development.
Android Automotive Platform experience.
Android Automotive
Application layer experience.
Experience architecting, building, and deploying IVI environments.
Take a lead in evolving observability, logging and telematics best practices.
Fluent in at least: Kotlin, C++
A flexible attitude and entrepreneurial mindset.
Be willing to engage outside of your usual responsibility area, learn new technologies and tackle challenges beyond IVI.

Nice To Haves

Digital Twin and Software-Defined Vehicle Appreciation.
Cuttlefish.
Agentic AI experience.
CarPlay / Android Auto
Hardware Abstraction Layers
Mobile application development experience.
Rust, Golang.
Experience working with Japanese vendors and OEMs.
Rudimentary Japanese (not required).

Responsibilities

Help set up development environments and best practices.
Work with Leadership/Manager and Product Owners to agree upon initial activities and prioritized backlog.
Collaborate to determine prioritized implementation plans for backlog items.
Kick off the implementation of backlog items and see through to release.
Help develop faster go-to-market approaches, including accelerated testing in virtual environments.
Take the initiative to explore how Agentic AI can be incorporated into our virtual rigs.
Work with Honda vendors that are dependencies.
Take a technical lead in the next IVI iterations and next-generation platforms.
Occasional travel to Japan.