Senior Technical Project Manager — Safety Case (Vehicle / Hardware)

Aurora; Mountain View (CA); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Aurora in Mountain View, CA is seeking a Senior Technical Project Manager to drive the Vehicle/Hardware safety case end to end. You will coordinate hardware evidence, manage claims, and partner with Hardware Engineering, Vehicle Platform, Systems/Safety, and the Safety Organization to ensure timely, audit-ready results.

This hands-on program role combines project management, safety-case engineering judgment, and cross-functional leadership, with a hybrid in-office schedule.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical, Computer, or Mechanical Engineering or equivalent technical experience.
• 5+ years in technical program management, hardware/systems engineering, or safety case development.
• Experience in safety-critical hardware domains ( automotive, aerospace, etc.).
• Strong planning, risk management, and cross-team coordination skills.
• Knowledge of safety/assurance case methods and ISO 26262 familiarity.
• Proficiency with Jira/Confluence and traceability tooling.

Responsibilities

• Own the Vehicle/Hardware safety case end to end across releases.
• Define timelines, scope, and Definitions of Done; coordinate hardware evidence.
• Drive evidence to sufficiency and manage unsatisfied claims as risks.
• Maintain safety case health dashboards and support audits.
• Mentor claim/evidence owners and support SRB Go/No-Go decisions.

Skills

Technical program management

Hardware/systems engineering

Functional safety

Safety case / assurance-case

Cross-functional leadership

Communication

Stakeholder management

Education

Bachelor's degree in Electrical/Computer/Mechanical Engineering or equivalent

Advanced degree in a technical field

Tools

Jira

Confluence

Jama

Job description

Who We AreAurora’s mission is to deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly.

What We Are Looking ForAurora hires talented people with diverse backgrounds who are ready to help build a transportation ecosystem that will make our roads safer, get crucial goods where they need to go, and make mobility more efficient and accessible for all. We’re searching for a Senior Technical Project Manager — Safety Case (Vehicle / Hardware).

We are searching for a Senior Technical Project Manager to drive Aurora's Vehicle/Hardware safety case to completion. Reporting into the Safety Case & Quality Management team, you will own the program management of the Vehicle/Hardware portion of Aurora's safety case end to end - planning the work, coordinating the engineers who own claims and produce hardware evidence, tracking progress and risk, and driving each claim through to closure in support of release decisions. You will be the connective tissue between Hardware Engineering, Vehicle Platform teams, Systems/Safety Engineering, and the Safety Org, ensuring the safety case stays on schedule, sufficient, and audit-ready. Your work directly substantiates that the Aurora-equipped vehicle is acceptably safe to operate on public roads.

You will turn the enterprise Safety Case Lifecycle Process into executed reality for the Vehicle/Hardware module: scoping impacted claims at each milestone, establishing Definitions of Done and timelines, orchestrating hardware evidence development and release, assessing sufficiency against Aurora's Maturity Rubric, managing unsatisfied claims as accepted risks, and keeping evidence fresh across milestone and non-milestone releases. You will maintain the live picture of safety case health and progress, and your reporting will feed the Safety Review Board's Go/No-Go decisions for releases. This is a hands-on technical program role - equal parts project management, hardware safety-case engineering judgment, and cross-functional leadership.

In this role, you will

• Own the program management of the Vehicle/Hardware safety case end to end - planning, scoping, scheduling, and driving claims to closure across releases.
• Scope claims impacted by each milestone and platform change, set Definitions of Done and timelines, and coordinate the engineers who produce the hardware evidence.
• Drive evidence to sufficiency - released, version-controlled, and assessed - and progress each claim through the safety case workflow to closure while preserving independence.
• Manage safety risk for unsatisfied claims through accepted RISK tickets, and keep the live picture of safety case health, progress, and evidence freshness.
• Compile hardware inputs to release closure reports, support SRB Go/No-Go decisions, and drive continuous improvement of Definitions of Done and the Framework.
• Support internal and external safety case audits and assessments, and mentor claim and evidence owners on the process and tooling.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or equivalent applicable technical experience.
• 5+ years of experience in technical program/project management, hardware/systems engineering, functional safety, or safety case / assurance-case development, including leading cross-functional technical programs to schedule.
• Demonstrated experience in a safety-critical hardware domain (e.g. automotive, aerospace, industrial, medical devices).
• Proven program-management skills: planning, tracking, risk and dependency management, and driving deliverables to closure across multiple contributing teams.
• Working knowledge of safety/assurance case methods (claims–arguments–evidence or GSN) and of ISO 26262 (especially Part 5, hardware development, and the hardware metrics in Part 5/Annexes), with familiarity in ASPICE.
• Familiarity with hardware safety evidence - hardware architecture and design, FMEA/FMEDA, diagnostic coverage, FIT-rate / PMHF and reliability analyses, component and HW verification/qualification artifacts - under document and configuration control, with the technical depth to judge sufficiency.
• Proficiency with Jira and Confluence for workflow and program tracking, and with requirements/traceability tooling (e.g. Jama); able to build and maintain status dashboards and reports.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder-management skills, with the ability to convey status, risk, and recommendations clearly to engineering teams and senior leadership.
• Ability to work independently, lead a cross-functional program, and influence without direct authority across hardware, vehicle platform, and safety organizations.

Desirable Qualifications

• Advanced degree in a relevant technical field, and/or a program-management credential (e.g. PMP).
• Familiarity with UL 4600 (autonomous systems safety), and ISO/SAE 21434 (cybersecurity) as complementary standards.
• Hands-on experience with hardware safety analysis tooling (e.g. FMEDA / reliability tools) and with sensor, compute, or actuation hardware in a vehicle context.
• Experience preparing for or supporting external assessments (e.g. TÜV, ISO 26262 hardware assessments) and managing findings to closure.
• Experience with the transition of a safety-critical hardware product from development to commercial deployment, including across multiple vehicle platforms.
• Experience building quality/assurance metrics and dashboards (e.g. AWS QuickSight, S3, Lambda) for evidence-health monitoring.
• Experience developing process and training materials for safety case or QMS adoption.

The base salary range for this position is $150,000-$240,000 per year. Aurora’s pay ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Within the range, the successful candidate’s starting base pay will be determined based on factors including job-related skills, experience, qualifications, relevant education or training, and market conditions. These ranges may be modified in the future. The successful candidate will also be eligible for an annual bonus, equity compensation, and benefits.

Working at AuroraAt Aurora, we bring together extraordinarily talented and experienced people united by the strength of our values. We operate with integrity, set outrageous goals, and build a culture where we win together — all without any jerks.

We believe in-person work increases collaboration, empathy and our ability to lead effectively. As a result, we operate in a hybrid work environment where Aurorans are in office at least 3 days per week.

Our Careers page provides insight into what it is like to work at Aurora, and you can find all the latest updates in our Newsroom.

Our commitment to safetyAt the core of everything we do is our commitment to safety. Building best-in-class self-driving technology will take time, and we believe that each employee at Aurora has a role in contributing to safety, every step of the way. Aurora expects commitment to our safety policies from every employee, and seeks candidates who take an active responsibility, can contribute to building an atmosphere of trust, and invest in the organization’s long-term success by prioritizing working safely, no matter what.

Our commitment to inclusionAurora considers candidates without regard to their race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy status, parent or caregiver status, ancestry, political affiliation, veteran and/or military status, physical or mental disability, or any other status protected by federal or state law. Aurora considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state, and local law. We are also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at [e-mail].