Principal Engineer, Behavior Understanding and Evaluation

Mission Summary:

The AV Behavior Design and Evaluation Team is responsible for owning the design and assessment of the AV behavior utilizing the concept of AV behavior competencies. The team relies on systematic decomposition of AV behavior along with data driven assessment utilizing data from on-road and simulation test modalities. We are responsible for building and operating robust, large-scale evaluation systems, alongside sophisticated simulation workflows and insightful diagnostic tools. By combining expert human judgment with advanced data driven techniques, we evaluate the system behavior performance.

As the team is looking to scale to support more and more behavioral competencies, we are looking for passionate Engineers to help build a robust framework to leverage the best of agile systems engineering and data driven performance assessment to achieve our ambitious goals in scaling our system design and evaluation processes. We are looking to work with people who are driven to design robust systems and transform complex data into measurable progress toward a safer, smarter transportation future.

This person will get to build relationships with the team as well cross-functional across organization to help build a cohesive understanding AV performance as applicable to the Behavioral Competencies.

What you’ll do:

• Decompose AV operational design domain (ODD) into AV capabilities
• Define precise atomic system and subsystem behaviors and interfaces required to realize these capabilities.
• Collaborate extensively with development teams (Autonomy, Infrastructure) to drive the design and implementation of new features that enable defined AV capabilities and enhance the overall product experience.
• Strategically plan and execute system-level testing campaigns. This includes leveraging advanced simulation tools and coordinating tests on closed course tracks and proving grounds to ensure the system meets functional and performance requirements.
• Effectively utilize existing metrics and propose new metrics to evaluate AV performance via simulation and on-road testing modalities.
• Pioneer the definition and implementation of key evaluation metrics and reward functions, driving autonomy performance across safety, comfort, and assertiveness
• Characterize the performance target against parameters used to define AV capabilities to provide nuance in performance evaluation
• Deliver strategic insights and recommendations based on AV capability testing by building meaningful visualizations
• Develop and maintain comprehensive dashboards and reporting tools. Distill on-road performance data into actionable feedback for engineering teams and create high-level, insightful summaries for executive leadership.
• Focus on automating simulation result analysis processes and gaps, removing manual processes where applicable
• Partner cross-functionally with Behaviors, Actions, Simulation, System Engineering, Research, and other Onboard/Offboard Software Teams on evaluation strategies

What we’re looking for:

• Bachelor's degree and 7+ years of experience in one of Autonomous Vehicle, Systems Eng, Data Science, or relevant areas
• Strong understanding of Autonomous Vehicle architecture and functions of key subsystems such as perception, planning, prediction etc.
• Proven experience in decomposing high level problem statements into requirements and solution designs
• Fluency in SQL, Python or similar languages for analysis of datasets
• Proficiency in crafting data-driven reports and technical strategy documents for executive decision-making
• Excellent interpersonal skills to build relationships with other teams
• Excellent communication skills; effective in communicating complex concepts and driving resolutions
• Self-starter who is motivated to set and achieve goals and takes initiative to drive ambiguous tasks/projects to completion

Ideally, you also have:

• Masters degree
• Experience collaborating in an agile development environment 
• A background in shaping product roadmaps
• Working with a global workforce that spans multiple timezones
• Experience in mentoring and leadership development

We encourage a hybrid schedule wit