Senior Systems Performance Engineer

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

Job summary

Motional’s Platform Infrastructure organization builds and operates the foundational onboard software systems for our autonomous vehicles. We are seeking a Linux Systems Performance Engineer to improve performance, reliability, and observability of our onboard compute platform in a hybrid Pittsburgh role.

You will design observability infrastructure, develop metrics and tooling, and work with autonomy and platform teams to diagnose and resolve resource contention, latency spikes, and system

Qualifications

• Strong experience debugging and optimizing Linux system performance.

Responsibilities

• Design and build low‑overhead observability infrastructure for resource usage, latency, scheduling behavior, and system health.
• Develop metrics, tracing, profiling, and analysis tools that identify performance contention and explain system behavior.
• Improve real‑time and post‑event root cause analysis across CPU, memory, storage, networking, and other shared resources.
• Partner with autonomy and platform teams to investigate crashes, latency spikes, missed deadlines, resource exhaustion, and performance regressions.
• Analyze application, operating system, kernel, and hardware interactions on embedded Linux compute platforms.
• Translate investigations into durable improvements, including tooling, alerts, dashboards, performance requirements, and architectural changes.
• Define performance benchmarks and regression tests for onboard systems.
• Evaluate the performance impact of new software, hardware, and system configurations.

Skills

Linux performance

OS concepts

C/C++

Python scripting

Perf tracing tools

eBPF/BPF

bpftrace

Tools

perf

ftrace

eBPF

BCC

bpftrace

flame graphs

Job description

Motional’s Platform Infrastructure organization builds and operates the foundational onboard software systems that power our autonomous vehicles. Our responsibilities include system communications and IPC, networking, Linux operating system development and maintenance, high-speed data logging and offload, and onboard system performance optimization.

We are seeking a Linux Systems Performance Engineer to improve the performance, reliability, and observability of our onboard compute platform. This will be a hybrid role focused on both the development of new observability methods and metrics while also operating with the rest of the engineering organization to diagnose and develop solutions to improve our real‑time system. You will build tools and telemetry that enable faster, and increasingly real‑time, root cause analysis while partnering with autonomy teams to diagnose and resolve resource contention, crashes, latency spikes, and other complex system‑level issues.

What You’ll Be Doing:

• Design and build low‑overhead observability infrastructure for resource usage, latency, scheduling behavior, and system health.
• Develop metrics, tracing, profiling, and analysis tools that identify performance contention and explain system behavior.
• Improve real‑time and post‑event root cause analysis across CPU, memory, storage, networking, and other shared resources.
• Partner with autonomy and platform teams to investigate crashes, latency spikes, missed deadlines, resource exhaustion, and performance regressions.
• Analyze application, operating system, kernel, and hardware interactions on embedded Linux compute platforms.
• Translate investigations into durable improvements, including tooling, alerts, dashboards, performance requirements, and architectural changes.
• Define performance benchmarks and regression tests for onboard systems.
• Evaluate the performance impact of new software, hardware, and system configurations.
• Communicate findings clearly and provide actionable recommendations to cross‑functional engineering teams.
• Contribute to technical roadmaps for onboard observability and system performance.

What We’re Looking For:

• Strong experience debugging and optimizing Linux system performance.
• Deep understanding of operating system concepts, including process scheduling, memory management, filesystems, networking, and inter‑process communication.
• Experience diagnosing resource contention, latency, crashes, or throughput problems in complex production systems.
• Experience with Linux performance and tracing tools such as perf, ftrace, eBPF/BPF, BCC, bpftrace, flame graphs, or equivalent technologies.
• Proficiency in a systems programming language such as C or C++.
• Experience using Python, shell scripting, or similar languages for automation and data analysis.
• Ability to analyze large volumes of system telemetry and distinguish root causes from symptoms.
• Ability to work effectively across organizational boundaries and collaborate with application, infrastructure, and hardware teams.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex system behavior to varied audiences.

Bonus Points (not required):

• Experience optimizing embedded Linux or automotive compute platforms.
• Experience with real‑time or latency‑sensitive systems.
• Experience working directly with the Linux kernel, scheduler, device drivers, or kernel instrumentation.
• Experience designing observability platforms, telemetry pipelines, or fleet‑scale performance analysis systems.
• Experience with cgroups, namespaces, containers, and resource isolation.
• Experience analyzing performance across heterogeneous compute resources such as CPUs, GPUs, and hardware accelerators.
• Experience with high‑throughput networking, storage, data logging, or data offload systems.
• Experience establishing performance budgets, service‑level objectives, or automated regression detection.
• Experience with the NVIDIA DRIVE AGX platform or DriveOS ecosystem.
• Familiarity with Bazel and large‑scale C++ codebases.

Work Arrangement:

This role is hybrid from our Pittsburgh office and requires in‑office days each week to support hands‑on system work and cross‑functional collaboration.

Salary Range: $149,000 USD - $198,500 USD. The estimated compensation range listed in this job posting reflects base salary only. This role may include additional forms of compensation such as a bonus or company equity. Candidates for certain positions are eligible to participate in Motional’s benefits program. Motional’s benefits include but are not limited to medical, dental, vision, 401(k) with a company match, health saving accounts, life insurance, pet insurance, and more.

Motional AD Inc. is an EOE. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. To comply with Federal Law, we participate in E‑Verify. All newly‑hired employees are queried through this electronic system established by the DHS and the SSA to verify their identity and employment eligibility.