Systems Engineering Manager - Autonomy Behavior

Description

This role is remote, but if you live within a 50-mile radius of Austin, Detroit, Warren, Milford, or Sunnyvale, CA, you must report to that location at least 3 times a week.

You will lead the team that specifies how autonomous vehicle behavior is defined and backed by evidence, working with behavior, software, simulation, safety, legal, product and operations.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow a team of autonomy behavior systems engineers, setting standards for technical quality, delivery, communication and development.
• Set the systems engineering and validation direction for major capabilities and cross-cutting behaviors.
• Connect requirements, coverage, simulation validity, metrics, acceptance criteria and release evidence into one coherent approach.
• Guide the build-out of scalable evaluation and simulation systems that draw on synthetic tests, road data and counterfactual references, covering scenario sourcing, orchestration, data quality and reproducibility.
• Make sure the team delivers methods and products that help developers and support release and launch decisions.
• Work with Engineering, Safety, Legal, Product and Operations to resolve ambiguity, build alignment and give clear recommendations on engineering, release and launch decisions.

Requirements

• Master's degree in systems engineering, mechanical, aerospace or electrical engineering, computer science, robotics, or a closely related field.
• 8+ years of professional experience in systems engineering, autonomous vehicles, robotics, vehicle development, simulation or safety-critical validation.
• A proven record evaluating autonomous vehicles for a commercial fleet, a launch, a supervised release, or another high-consequence product decision.
• Solid systems engineering fundamentals: architecture and decomposition, use-case and scene modeling, requirements strategy, interface definition, verification and validation planning, and traceability.
• Hands-on experience defining or leading simulation evaluation at scale, balancing coverage, confidence, runtime, cost and simulation validity.
• Strong Python skills, with the ability to review production-quality analysis or validation code and understand how tools and data pipelines support engineering decisions.
• Strong communication skills, able to align teams with different goals, vocabulary and technical views.
• Stakeholder management and technical leadership across organizational boundaries, leading through influence as well as formal authority.
• Experience as a Tech Lead, technical lead manager, or people manager delivering complex technical work through a team.
• A track record of developing engineers, giving clear feedback, supporting career growth, and building an inclusive, accountable team culture.
• Preferred: human benchmarking for behavior and safety evaluation, including attentive human benchmark construction, human percentile methods, expert review and the limits of human references.
• Preferred: hazard analysis, such as structured, scenario-based or failure analysis.
• Preferred: building or using a safety case, writing or reviewing safety claims, and deciding what validation evidence supports them.
• Preferred: risk quantification and acceptance, including severity and exposure reasoning, risk budgets and mitigation decisions.
• Preferred: turning legal or regulatory expectations into a defensible compliance strategy with requirements, metrics, test coverage and documented claims.
• Preferred: designing validation lifecycles that link scope, requirements, hazard analysis, coverage planning, test generation, scorecards, release decisions and continuous monitoring.
• Preferred: hiring, organizing and prioritizing a technical team through changing product and program needs.

Conditions

Hybrid: you are expected to report to a specific location at least 3 times a week, or more often if your manager sets it.

Travel of less than 25% is required.

The base salary range is $189,300 - $290,000. The offer within that range depends on factors relevant to the position.

The pay range is a good-faith estimate under applicable state law and may not reflect roles outside the California Bay Area.

Some candidates may need to complete a role-related assessment and/or a pre-employment screening before starting.

The company is an equal opportunity employer committed to an inclusive workplace free of unlawful discrimination.

Benefits

• Incentive pay based on company performance, job level and individual performance.
• After a satisfactory motor vehicle report review, you can join a company vehicle evaluation program and drive and assess a the company vehicle. Participants must buy or lease a qualifying GM vehicle every four years unless a limited exception applies.
• Relocation benefits may be available under company policy.
• Well-being support from day one, at work and at home, plus Total Rewards resources.