Data Platform Engineering Manager — Lead ML Datasets & Big Data

motional; United States; Hybrid; USD 172,000 - 229,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision coverage

401k with company match

Pet insurance

Bonus eligibility

Equity options

Hybrid work schedule

Job summary

Motional in the United States seeks a senior leader to build and lead a Data Platform team that accelerates ML dataset generation and scales a petabyte-scale data warehouse. The role blends hands-on technical leadership with people management to support autonomous vehicle development.

You will guide architects, engineers, and data scientists, shaping the data platform vision, pipelines, and storage choices, while mentoring staff and collaborating with ML/R&D teams on scalable solutions.

Qualifications

• BS or MS in Computer Science or related field.
• 8+ years in data platform engineering.
• 3+ years in a technical lead or management role overseeing 3-7 direct reports.
• Extensive experience with petabyte-plus scale data platforms such as data warehouses, object storage, and ML training data stores.
• Hands-on experience with workflow orchestration frameworks such as Airflow or AWS Step Functions.
• Strong programming skills in Python, with C++ experience a plus.
• Deep knowledge of data storage formats such as Parquet, Iceberg, and Lance and their tradeoffs.
• Strong knowledge of cloud infrastructure (AWS or GCP) and their product offerings.
• Prior experience building data warehouses or lakehouse architectures at a machine learning or robotics organization.

Responsibilities

• Build, lead, and manage a high-performing team of data and infrastructure engineers.
• Define team goals, priorities, and roadmap aligned with broader organizational objectives.
• Provide technical guidance, mentorship, and career development for team members.
• Define the technical vision for storing metrics and generating ML datasets for large computer vision and behavioral models.
• Evaluate and adopt cutting-edge technologies for data loaders, metric ingestion, and large-dataset querying.
• Collaborate with ML research, ML training platform, and data engineering teams to integrate solutions seamlessly.
• Communicate complex technical strategies to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Skills

Python

Leadership

Cloud computing

Data modeling

Education

BS or MS in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Airflow

AWS

Step Functions

Parquet

Iceberg

Lance

Git

Job description

Motional in the United States seeks a senior leader to build and lead a Data Platform team that accelerates ML dataset generation and scales a petabyte-scale data warehouse. The role blends hands-on technical leadership with people management to support autonomous vehicle development.

You will guide architects, engineers, and data scientists, shaping the data platform vision, pipelines, and storage choices, while mentoring staff and collaborating with ML/R&D teams on scalable solutions.