Senior Data Scientist, Autonomous Systems Evaluation

Motional; Pittsburgh (Allegheny County); Hybrid; USD 149,000 - 198,500; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

401(k) with company match

Job summary

Motional is hiring a Senior Data Scientist to lead evaluation methodologies for the autonomous system stack, ensuring rigorous validation and performance targets across on-road and off-board data. You will influence metrics, sampling strategies, and statistical inference to inform launch criteria and continuous improvement.

The role involves partnering with safety, systems engineering, and simulation teams to deliver reliable, scalable evaluation signals and actionable insights for leadership.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of industry experience solving complex problems with large datasets.
• Bachelor's or higher in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Data Science, Robotics, Physics, Mathematics, or related field; Master's/PhD preferred.
• Strong Python and SQL skills; experience with data analysis libraries.

Responsibilities

• Lead development of evaluation frameworks for autonomous systems with data-driven performance measures.
• Collaborate with Safety and Systems Engineering to map metrics to safety standards (SOTIF, ISO 21448) and launch readiness.
• Ensure metrics are reliable for safety cases and launch decisions.
• Monitor metric reliability and detect drift or inconsistencies over time.
• Drive performance analysis using statistical methods for simulation and on-road data.
• Develop new statistical methods to analyze autonomous vehicle performance data.
• Turn raw disengagements and edge cases into scenarios for simulation catalog expansion.
• Identify edge cases via fleet data and feed into engineering to strengthen test coverage.
• Communicate findings clearly to leadership and technical partners.
• Establish correlation between on-road and simulation data to aid interpretation of results.
• Create self-service insights for developers to understand impact of changes.
• Mentor colleagues and promote data-driven decision making.

Skills

Python

SQL

Statistics

ML methods

Communication

Independent work

Data analysis

Problem solving

Education

Bachelor's or higher in CS/Robotics/Data Science

Master's or PhD preferred

Tools

AWS

Job description

Motional is hiring a Senior Data Scientist to lead evaluation methodologies for the autonomous system stack, ensuring rigorous validation and performance targets across on-road and off-board data. You will influence metrics, sampling strategies, and statistical inference to inform launch criteria and continuous improvement.

The role involves partnering with safety, systems engineering, and simulation teams to deliver reliable, scalable evaluation signals and actionable insights for leadership.