Senior Software Engineer, Evaluation Flywheel - Autonomous Vehicles

Nvidia Corporation; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 224,000 - 356,500; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Benefits

Job summary

NVIDIA in Santa Clara is seeking a senior software leader to own the eval flywheel strategy and architecture, guiding how driving data becomes curated golden datasets and how metrics are measured against them for trust. You will build self-serve pipelines and reporting tools, and partner with senior engineers across test engineering, behavior planning, and infrastructure to accelerate evaluation cycles.

Collaborate with model developers to push evaluation forward using learned, VLM-based

Qualifications

• Track record of independent execution and technical leadership.
• Clear, proactive communication with engineers and senior leaders at a fast pace.
• BS or MS in Computer Science, Robotics, or related field.
• 12+ years building software in autonomous vehicles, robotics, or large-scale ML systems.
• Deep experience evaluating ML or robotic systems: metric design, ground-truth/dataset curation, precision/recall.
• Strong Python and data engineering skills for production-scale pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Own the eval flywheel strategy and architecture for curated datasets and metrics.
• Set standards for evaluation quality, dataset health, and release processes.
• Build tooling for self-serve dataset pipelines and metric reporting used daily.
• Partner with senior engineers across test engineering, behavior planning, and infra.
• Collaborate with AI model developers to speed evaluation iterations.

Skills

Independent leadership

Technical leadership

Python

Data engineering

Education

BS/MS in Computer Science, Robotics, or related field

Job description

What you\'ll be doing:

• Owning the eval flywheel\'s strategy and architecture: how road and simulation driving data becomes curated golden datasets, how metrics are measured against them (precision/recall), and how those results earn lasting trust with the teams that depend on them.
• Setting the standard for evaluation quality: golden dataset curation, versioning, and health; metric performance measurement; and release processes that keep results dependable as the system evolves.
• Building the tooling that helps our metric developers iterate quickly: self-serve dataset pipelines, metric performance measurement, and quality reporting used every day by the team and our partners.
• Partnering with senior engineers and leaders across test engineering, behavior planning, and infrastructure - setting expectations, working through trade-offs, and being the voice of evaluation quality in cross-team decisions.
• Working directly with AI model developers so evaluation iteration speed becomes an advantage for the whole program, including our push into learned, VLM-based evaluation.

What we need to see:

• A track record of independent execution and technical leadership: finding the highest-leverage problem, driving it across team boundaries, and delivering without waiting to be asked.
• Clear, proactive communication with engineers and senior leaders alike, at a fast pace.
• BS or MS in Computer Science, Robotics, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
• 12+ years building software, with significant time in autonomous vehicles, robotics, or large-scale ML systems.
• Deep experience evaluating ML or robotic systems: metric design, ground-truth and golden dataset curation, precision/recall methodology, and the data pipelines behind them.
• Strong Python and data engineering skills for production-scale pipelines.

Ways to stand out from the crowd:

• Experience building an evaluation flywheel before - dataset curation, metric measurement, developer tooling - and the story of how it changed model development velocity.
• Closed-loop simulation evaluation for autonomous driving, and the realism questions that come with it.
• Applying LLMs or VLMs to evaluation, or productionization the infrastructure behind them.
• A history of earning trust for metrics across skeptical partner teams.

Your base salary will be determined based on your location, experience, and the pay of employees in similar positions. The base salary range is 224,000 USD - 356,500 USD.

You will also be eligible for equity and benefits .

Applications for this job will be accepted at least until July 31, 2026.

This posting is for an existing vacancy.

NVIDIA uses AI tools in its recruiting processes.

NVIDIA is committed to fostering an inclusive work environment and proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As we highly value diversity in our current and future employees, we do not discriminate (including in our hiring and promotion practices) on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law.