Motional’s Pittsburgh office is located in the new Hazelwood Green development, a culmination of the city’s goal of restoring an economic driver to the neighborhood in a thoughtful, inclusive, and sustainable way. With views along the Monongahela river, the Pittsburgh office is in the heart of this new state of the art development.
Mission Summary: Our newly formed Design Release Engineering team, within the Vehicle Platform Engineering group, is seeking a highly motivated Staff Engineer to own the design release and integration of our autonomous vehicle’s compute and connectivity subsystem. This role serves as the primary technical authority for the end-to-end design, release, validation, and production readiness of our high-performance compute hardware and associated controllers. You will ensure robust technical execution, manage supplier and cross-functional alignment, and drive hardware delivery that meets all performance, cost, and timing objectives.
What You’ll Be Doing:
- Own the complete design release of the high-performance compute and connectivity hardware, including the mechanical mounting, alignment, thermal management, electrical interface, and vehicle network integration.
- Drive technical execution for the full product lifecycle, from concept and architecture definition to sustaining engineering and continuous improvement.
- Oversee the generation and release of all engineering documentation, including models and drawings, Bills of Material (BOM), specifications, and test reports, ensuring alignment with vehicle-level design.
- Define and maintain the Design Verification Plan & Report (DVP&R), ensuring successful validation against system performance targets.
- Lead the Engineering Change (ECN) process for compute and connectivity hardware, ensuring traceability, cost impact analysis, version control, and full cross-functional buy-in.
- Act as the primary technical and program interface to suppliers (Tier 1 and Tier 2), tracking part maturity through DV, PV, and PPAP phases to ensure tooling and delivery readiness.
- Build strong partnerships across the Systems Engineering, Autonomy, Software Infrastructure, Quality, and Vehicle Integration teams to ensure seamless hardware integration and manufacturability (DFM/DFA).
- Lead technical program reviews and design readiness assessments, proactively developing risk mitigation plans to ensure compute hardware maturity aligns with program milestones and build events.
- Provide regular, concise updates to technical leadership on design maturity, validation progress, open issues, and timely closure metrics.
What We’re Looking For:
- 8+ years of experience in automotive hardware design and release engineering, with direct ownership of Domain Controllers, HPCs, or Telematics units.
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Electrical, Mechanical, Computer, or Systems Engineering (or a related field).