Principal Engineer Team Lead, Safety & Targets

The role

The Principal Engineer Team Lead will lead the Safety & Targets team to develop and validate safety critical functions and performance targets. This role involves driving the design, validation, and scaling of safety systems using real-world data, simulation, and closed-course testing.

What you will do

• Own Motional’s safety critical functions including collision detection and response
• Own the benchmark program across safety, comfort, and assertiveness
• Advance next-generation evasive maneuver and preventability modeling
• Define sufficient coverage for validation test suites and identify gaps
• Deliver safety case evidence including hazard analysis, STPA, HAZOP, and FMEA
• Scale through tooling and automation for crash database and collision event analysis
• Mentor and grow a high-performing engineering team
• Partner with Autonomy, Infrastructure, Operations, and Legal teams

Required qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree and 7+ years of experience in Systems Engineering, Functional Safety, Autonomous Systems, or Robotics
• Master’s degree/PhD and 5+ years of experience in Systems Engineering, Functional Safety, Autonomous Systems, or Robotics
• 3+ years of experience leading safety-critical development, validation, or safety assurance programs
• Proven track record of growing small, high-performing teams
• Track record defining quantitative performance targets and acceptance criteria
• Working expertise in hazard and safety analysis methods such as STPA, HAZOP, FMEA, and hazard analysis and risk assessment
• Expertise in leveraging large-scale simulation, track, and road data
• Familiarity with SOTIF, ISO 26262, UL4600, and AVSC behavior competencies

Nice to have

• Experience with collision and crash data analysis
• Proficiency in Python, SQL, and data visualization
• Experience establishing and leveraging industry benchmarks and human naturalistic driving behavior
• Familiarity with ride comfort and motion-sickness modeling
• Experience presenting safety argumentation to external assessors, regulators, or certification bodies
• Experience publishing safety research or white papers, or participating in industry consortia
• Experience collaborating within agile environments and global, distributed teams

Benefits

• Medical
• Dental
• Vision
• 401k with a company match
• Health saving accounts
• Life insurance
• Pet insurance

About the company

Motional is a leading autonomous driving company backed by Hyundai Motor Group. The company is a joint venture between Hyundai Motor Group and Aptiv focused on making driverless vehicles a safe, reliable, and accessible reality.