Engineering Manager, Middleware Transport

AI Chopping Block; Foster City, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Zoox is seeking a seasoned software leader to own the Middleware Transport team's roadmap, staffing, and deliverables in a fast-paced autonomous driving environment. You will partner with firmware, security, simulation, manufacturing, and IT to align roadmaps and drive cross-functional projects.

You will mentor engineers, manage performance reviews, and hire to fill gaps, while setting high technical standards for in-vehicle networks, pub/sub, and cloud connectivity.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in CS, EE, or equivalent.
• 9+ years in software development; 4+ years in leadership.
• Strong grounding in distributed systems, pub/sub, or transport protocols.
• Strong C++ experience with large codebases.
• Proven ability to drive cross-team initiatives.

Responsibilities

• Own the roadmap and release commitments for messaging, in-vehicle network, and cloud connectivity.
• Lead and grow a software engineering team; manage performance and promotions.
• Represent the team in cross-functional programs; build partnerships.
• Set the technical bar and ensure usable abstractions for other teams.
• Balance reliability work with long-horizon architecture decisions.

Skills

Software development

C++

Leadership

Distributed systems

Cross-team collaboration

Education

Bachelor's/Master's degree in CS or ECE

Tools

DDS

PTP

QUIC

Ethernet switch config

Job description

Zoox is building the world's most advanced self-driving hardware and software solution, and nearly every part of it depends on moving data reliably. Sensor frames to perception, planner decisions to vehicle controls, telemetry to the cloud, and remote operator video back down again. All of it crosses process, host, and network boundaries under hard latency and reliability budgets, on a vehicle that has to keep working when a link degrades or a network gets congested.

The Middleware Transport team owns that data path end to end: in-vehicle messaging (pub/sub, RPC, inter-process and inter-host transport), the vehicle's internal network, and vehicle-to-cloud connectivity. It also owns the transport and serialization abstractions the rest of the software organization builds on. Every one of those paths crosses a team boundary, so the work happens alongside firmware, product security, simulation, manufacturing, and IT, and those partners rely on this team for transport and networking depth to achieve their goals. As the team leader you will own the roadmap and the release commitments, and you will spend a real share of your time in those partnerships.

In this role, you will:

• Own the roadmap, staffing, and release commitments across the team's messaging, in-vehicle network, and cloud connectivity work.

• Lead and grow a team of software engineers, run their performance and promotion cycles, and hire into the gaps.

• Represent the team in cross-functional programs across firmware, product security, simulation, fleet operations, and infrastructure, and build the relationships that keep shared work moving.

• Set the technical bar. Make the architecture calls stick, and make sure the abstractions the team ships are ones other teams want to build on.

• Balance interrupt-driven reliability work against long-horizon architecture, and be explicit with partners about the tradeoff.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in computer science, electrical / computer engineering, or equivalent experience.
• 9+ years of experience in software development, with 4+ years in a leadership role managing software engineers.
• Strong grounding in at least one of: networked distributed systems, pub/sub and RPC middleware, vehicle or embedded networking, or transport protocols. Enough depth to hold your own in a design review without needing to run it.
• Strong C++ programming experience with large code bases and technical dependencies.
• A track record of driving work that spans organizational boundaries, where you did not control the people doing the work.

Bonus Qualifications

• Robotics, automotive, aerospace, or another safety-relevant domain.
• Hands-on experience with DDS, PTP and time synchronization, QUIC or multipath transport, or Ethernet switch configuration and diagnostics at fleet scale.
• Experience building platform abstractions with internal customers, including the migration and adoption side.