Senior Technical Program Manager (Verification & Validation)

Zoox; Foster City (CA); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Paid parental leave

Affinity groups

Work from home opportunities

Health insurance

Wellbeing program and PTO

Family planning & caregiver support

Equity upside

Food program

Sports teams

Job summary

Zoox in Foster City, California, is seeking a Technical Program Manager to partner with software, hardware, vehicle engineering, and product teams to translate strategy into actionable roadmaps and execution plans.

You will lead software and data engineering squads, develop schedules, flag risks, estimate budgets, and communicate progress across stakeholders. The role emphasizes building scalable evaluation pipelines while maintaining clear, concise communications.

Qualifications

• BS/MS in computer science, engineering or equivalent.
• 6+ years engineering program management experience.
• Excellent written, presentation, and verbal communication skills.
• Experience with AI/ML, autonomous vehicles, CV, RL, simulation, or aerospace/auto processes is highly desired.

Responsibilities

• Work cross-functionally with engineering leaders to drive strategy into detailed roadmaps.
• Develop project schedules, identify milestones, flag risks, and estimate budgets.
• Translate corporate milestones into detailed roadmaps, timelines and deliverables.
• Drive evaluation pipelines leveraging statistics, simulation, and related methods.
• Build scalable systems to improve evaluation of autonomy behavior.
• Identify gaps, flag risks, drive bug closure, and track test coverage.

Skills

Engineering program management

Cross-functional collaboration

Effective communication

AI/ML experience

Safety-critical systems

Education

BS/MS in computer science, engineering or equivalent

Tools

Gantt charts

Risk matrix

Smartsheet

JIRA

Job description

• As a technical program manager, you will work cross-functionally with engineering leaders across software, hardware, vehicle engineering, and product to drive our corporate strategy into tactical and detailed road maps that facilitate effective execution at each stage of our growth curve
• You will work with each engineering team to develop project schedules, identify milestones, flag risks, estimate budgets, and clearly communicate ongoing progress
• Partner with Autonomy V&V engineering managers to translate the top-down corporate strategy and milestones into detailed product roadmaps, timelines, and deliverables
• You'll drive and support teams of software engineers and data engineers/scientists to stand up cutting-edge evaluation pipelines leveraging statistics, simulation, and other methods
• You'll play a defining role in building scalable systems that improve how we evaluate autonomy behavior at Zoox
• You'll work with cross-functional stakeholders to proactively identify gaps, flag risks, drive bug closure, and contribute to test coverage tracking
• You'll be a trusted partner to engineering leadership and the go-to person for unblocking teams and driving solutions

Benefits

• Paid parental leave
• Affinity groups and sports clubs
• Work from home opportunities
• Health insurance
• Our crew's health and happiness is our first priority. We offer comprehensive health and mental health support, a wellbeing program, and unlimited and flexible paid time away
• We invest in our crew—and their families for the long term. That includes generous family planning support, caregiver support, and strong cash compensation with great equity upside
• We look after our crew when they're in the office too. Our famous food program is a great example, featuring a daily changing menu of local and sustainable dishes
• There's a busy calendar of social events at Zoox, with more sports teams than you can count. And, of course, playing with robots is an important part of the job description

Deep familiarity with software development processes & proficiency in tools or processes required to manage complex projects (i.e. Gantt charts, risk matrix, Smartsheet, JIRA, etc.)Strong track record of managing complex cross-functional projects and problem-solvingAt least 6 years of experience in engineering program managementBS/MS degree in computer science, engineering or equivalent job experienceExcellent written, presentation, and verbal communication skills are a must, ability to create visualizations of KPIs and program risksAn ability to keep the big picture in focus and to provide clear, well-structured, and concise communications tailored to each appropriate audienceExperience with AI/ML, autonomous vehicles, computer vision, large language models, reinforcement learning, simulation, and/or automotive or aerospace processes is highly desiredExperience working on complex safety-critical systems