Lead Onboard Vehicle Network Architect

Motional; Boston, Las Vegas, Pittsburgh (MA, NV, Allegheny County); Hybrid; USD 149,000 - 199,000; Full time

Job summary

Motional in Boston is seeking an Onboard Vehicle Network Engineer to lead design, evolution and maintenance of onboard vehicle network architecture for current and next-generation autonomous vehicles. This hybrid role emphasizes hands-on software and system-level networking work with cross-functional teams.

You will help define topology, protocols, and diagnostics, while ensuring low latency, high throughput, and deterministic communication across all onboard compute nodes, sensors and

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering background with production code experience.
• Deep understanding of embedded network architectures and system-level communication flows.
• Experience with Ethernet, TCP/IP, UDP, CAN/CAN-FD.
• Proficiency in C++ (or another modern language).
• Experience designing network security policies, QoS, and logical isolation.
• Ability to build tools for network telemetry, packet inspection, and diagnostics.
• Experience collaborating with hardware, embedded Linux, system integration, and apps teams.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Design and evolve onboard vehicle network topology for current and next-generation autonomous vehicles.
• Define and implement network protocol stacks and messaging layers across compute nodes, sensors, MCUs, and actuators.
• Develop software and tooling for network routing, monitoring, fault detection, diagnostics, and failover handling.
• Collaborate with hardware, platform, and autonomy software teams to evaluate network components.
• Establish QoS budgets, isolation strategies, and latency/bandwidth constraints.
• Build telemetry and monitoring tools to observe network health and performance.
• Diagnose and resolve complex system-level networking issues.
• Define maintenance, provisioning and OTA firmware update strategies for network hardware.
• Contribute to technical roadmaps for onboard networking infrastructure.

Skills

Embedded networks

C++

Network protocols

CAN/CAN-FD

Linux

Telemetry tooling

Diagnostics

Cross-functional collaboration

Tools

Bazel

AUTOSAR Classic/Adaptive

DDS/ROS2

Automotive networking hardware

Job description

Motional in Boston is seeking an Onboard Vehicle Network Engineer to lead design, evolution and maintenance of onboard vehicle network architecture for current and next-generation autonomous vehicles. This hybrid role emphasizes hands-on software and system-level networking work with cross-functional teams.

You will help define topology, protocols, and diagnostics, while ensuring low latency, high throughput, and deterministic communication across all onboard compute nodes, sensors and