Director of Engineering (Vehicle Autonomy)

Our work We are a well capitalized VC-backed startup building a new type of spatial AI capable of universally solving autonomy. We innovate at the foundational layer of AI by training our own AI models, and have commercial partnerships with major OEMs.

Our team Our team is composed of AI pioneers from Google X, Google Brain, and Shield AI. Several of us are repeat founders, with deep commercialization insights across multiple enterprise segments.

Who you are

• Learn-it-all, not know-it-all: you have an innate curiosity for all things intellectual, and it’s something you can’t turn off. You obsess over finer details others miss.
• High intensity: you thrive in a high-stakes environment, and are driven by an innate obsession, not by others.
• Fast learner: you gravitate toward learning new things, and often find yourself learning more quickly than everyone around you.
• Driven by pain and discomfort: you enjoy leaving your comfort zone and challenging yourself
• Creative: track record of solving hard problems with solutions worthy of academic papers
• Educator: you take pride in your ability to communicate complex topics clearly and have excellent speaking and writing skills.
• Zero ego: you don’t just take feedback, but truly see it as a gift. You don’t wait until feedback is given, but solicit it with every opportunity.
• Founder mentality: you roll up your sleeves to help solve the most pressing problem on a given day, even if it has nothing to do with this job post.

Responsibilities

• Cross-functional collaboration: spend up to 50% of time working directly with the CEO, business development team, and our customers to align engineering priorities with customer needs and company objectives.
• Coaching, not managing: lead, mentor, and help our brilliant team of researchers and engineers to grow more quickly than they would on their own, providing technical guidance, regular feedback, and career development.
• Technical vision & leadership: set the technical vision, direction, architecture, and engineering standards to support the company's product roadmap and long-term vision.
• Roadmap execution: own end-to-end delivery of products, ensuring the team launches on startup timelines reliably.
• Project & resource planning: translate company priorities into engineering roadmaps, milestones, and resource allocation.
• Hiring & Team Building: attract and recruit exceptional engineers, build a high-performing engineering culture, and scale the organization as the company grows.
• Excellence in engineering: establish best practices around code quality, testing, infrastructure, reliability, and technical documentation.
• Hands-On Technical Contribution: stay close to the codebase, participate in critical technical decisions, and contribute directly to solving complex engineering challenges.

Qualifications

• Exceptional communication and organizational skills
• Experience managing and growing exceptional technical teams from early to late stage startup
• Experience coaching elite engineers and researchers that don't need to be managed
• Ability to make individual contributions when necessary
• Knowledge of latest AI research and products
• Experience in robotics is a plus
• Strong team management and leadership skills
• Proven experience in engineering management, including organizational design, performance management, and technical guidance, in a startup-specific environment
• Demonstrated project management skills for planning, prioritization, risk management, and on-time delivery of complex engineering initiatives.
• Hands-on background in software development, including modern development practices, code review, testing, and deployment.
• Experience leading technical organizations in autonomy, robotics, AI, or related deep-tech domains is highly beneficial.
• Track record of launching successful products working cross functionally
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.