Staff Software Engineer, Autonomous Vehicle Performance Metrics

Motional•Boston, MA

2d•$172,000 - $229,000

About The Position

Motional is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for its Systems Readiness and Performance team, which connects software development with real-world autonomous vehicle deployment. The team drives system design, verifies and validates the autonomy stack, and defines, measures, and validates system performance targets. It works with autonomy, infrastructure, and operations stakeholders to help build the safety case for launching driverless IONIQ 5 robotaxis. The engineer will develop and implement performance metrics and software tools, primarily in Python, to measure, analyze, and report on autonomous vehicle performance. The work turns complex on-road and simulated AV data into actionable insights to accelerate the development of safe, reliable autonomous technology. The role provides technical leadership on the team’s roadmap, performance-analysis pipelines, metrics software, and AI-powered tools. It involves cross-functional collaboration, data quality and reliability ownership, documentation, evaluation of relevant technologies, and mentoring and thought leadership. The position includes travel to testing sites for one to two weeks each quarter, mostly to Las Vegas and other domestic locations as needed.

Requirements

At least 5 years of software engineering experience.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field.
Expert-level proficiency in Python and strong understanding of modern software development principles and best practices.
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, particularly in complex system performance evaluation and data analysis.
Proficiency with Git and standard version-control workflows.
Excellent communication and collaboration skills, including the ability to explain technical concepts and results to engineers, product managers, and leadership.
Ability to work independently and effectively as part of a multidisciplinary team.
Strong attention to detail and commitment to data quality, accuracy, and rigorous testing.
Comfort working in a fast-paced, agile CI/CD environment.

Nice To Haves

Master's degree.
Experience in software development for autonomous vehicles or robotics.
Experience in perception, prediction, planning, or controls.
Experience with Python data-analysis and visualization tools such as Pandas, matplotlib, seaborn, and Jupyter notebooks.
Knowledge of statistical analysis and machine-learning techniques relevant to performance evaluation.

Responsibilities

Define a long-term technical roadmap with leadership and product managers, optimizing engineering traction and prioritizing deliverables that reduce deployment risk.
Design and implement pipelines that extract on-road and simulated events and evaluate AV performance, including lane-change capability, oscillation and braking metrics, and vulnerable road user emergence from occlusion.
Develop Python frameworks, AI-powered tools, and systems to calculate, aggregate, and visualize AV performance metrics from large datasets.
Collaborate across systems, software, AI, controls, simulation, and validation teams to drive improvements in areas such as Perception, Prediction, and Planning.
Maintain high standards for code quality, system reliability, and the accuracy and integrity of performance-evaluation data; identify risks and lead solutions.
Document metrics and analysis tools and share best practices with the engineering team.
Evaluate and integrate technologies and methodologies relevant to autonomous vehicles and software engineering.
Mentor engineers, lead design and architectural reviews, create comprehensive documentation, and share knowledge through internal technical talks.
Travel for one to two weeks each quarter to testing sites, mostly in Las Vegas, and to other domestic locations as business needs require.