Senior Sensor Validation Engineer for Autonomous Driving

General Motors LLC; Sunnyvale (CA); Hybrid; USD 153,000 - 234,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical

Dental

Vision

Health Savings Account

Flexible Spending Accounts

Retirement savings plan

Paid vacation & holidays

Tuition assistance

Employee assistance program

GM vehicle discounts

Job summary

General Motors is seeking a Senior Sensor Validation Engineer to validate sensor suites for autonomous driving. You will develop sensor characterization plans and drive on-vehicle validation campaigns, bridging hardware performance with vehicle integration.

You will lead benchtop and on-vehicle efforts, evaluating SNR, dynamic range, distortion, and KOZ/FOV constraints while coordinating with perception and hardware teams to resolve complex anomalies.

Qualifications

• Requires a Bachelor's degree in Electrical, Optical, or Computer Engineering or related field.
• 5+ years of dedicated experience in sensor validation, characterization, or test engineering across optical, lidar, or radar systems.
• Ability to design vehicle-level validation tests.
• Experience with L4 autonomous vehicles and associated behaviors, challenges, and validation needs.
• Strong knowledge of sensor physics principles (optics, electromagnetics, wave propagation, photonics, signal processing).
• Hands-on experience with bench and on-vehicle validation, including data collection and integration constraints (FOV, KOZ, ISP tuning).

Responsibilities

• Develop comprehensive characterization plans for sensors (camera, lidar, radar) with quantitative evaluation.
• Develop vehicle validation tests for performance and safety in autonomous driving environments.
• Plan and execute on-vehicle data collection campaigns on closed courses and public roads.
• Evaluate sensor performance metrics: SNR, dynamic range, optical distortion, point cloud density, RCS accuracy.
• Analyze placement, FOV overlap, KOZ constraints, and other integration metrics.
• Partner with perception and hardware design teams to root cause system-level anomalies.

Skills

Sensor validation

Data analysis

Python

MATLAB

Vehicle integration

Cross-functional collaboration

Time synchronization (PTP/gPTP)

Education

Bachelor's degree in Electrical/Optical/Computer Engineering or related

Tools

Darkrooms

Collimators

Target boards

Anechoic chambers

Target generators

Job description

General Motors is seeking a Senior Sensor Validation Engineer to validate sensor suites for autonomous driving. You will develop sensor characterization plans and drive on-vehicle validation campaigns, bridging hardware performance with vehicle integration.

You will lead benchtop and on-vehicle efforts, evaluating SNR, dynamic range, distortion, and KOZ/FOV constraints while coordinating with perception and hardware teams to resolve complex anomalies.