Staff Engineer Team Lead, Release Engineering

Pittsburgh Robotics Network; Pittsburgh (Allegheny County); Hybrid; USD 172,000 - 229,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

medical

dental

vision

401k with a company match

health saving accounts

life insurance

pet insurance

Job summary

Motional AD Inc. seeks a Staff Engineer Team Lead to grow and lead our Release team, specializing in software release and validation for autonomous vehicle software.

You will own the infrastructure for builds, testing, and deployment across the fleet, balancing speed with safety and reliability. You will drive strategy, mentor engineers, collaborate across Autonomy teams, and enforce governance that standardizes release processes and quality gates.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional experience in the autonomous driving or robotics industry, specifically within release engineering or simulation.
• Deep knowledge of autonomy systems and software release validation processes.
• Experience leading cross-functional engineering teams and mentoring engineers.

Responsibilities

• Release Governance & Strategic Architecture: Define, enforce code and release policies, branching strategies, and release lifecycles.
• Shift-Left Quality Leadership: Drive automated testing across pipeline stages to embed quality early.
• Release Process Standardization: Unify governance workflows and documentation across the organization.
• Release Validation & Gating: Oversee pipelines to minimize branch breakages and improve release quality.
• Cross-Functional Integration: Collaborate with Autonomy teams to safely integrate patches into release branches.

Skills

C++/Python

Engineering leadership

Autonomy knowledge

Release engineering

Education

BS or MS in Engineering

Tools

CI/CD pipelines

Job description

Mission Summary

Motional is at the forefront of the driverless revolution. We are seeking a Staff Engineer Team Lead to grow and lead our Release team, specializing in Software Release and Validation. In this critical role, you will be the technical and team leader responsible for designing, building, and deploying the infrastructure that ensures safe and reliable software releases across our autonomous vehicle fleet. You will play a vital part in realizing product improvements by managing the complex intersection of software builds, triage, and large-scale simulation-based validation.

The ideal candidate has a deep technical background in both release engineering and autonomous vehicle technologies, combined with a proven track record of leading and mentoring engineering teams. You should be able to work independently, taking ownership of large, vaguely defined problems while working cross-functionally across the entire organization.

Strategic Impact

• Release Strategy & Architecture: Drive the organizational strategy for release management. Evaluate and optimize branching paradigms (e.g., Trunk-Based vs. Gitflow) to balance developer velocity with release stability.
• Divergence Resolution: Audit and resolve discrepancies between mainline and active release branches. Enforce a "Mainline First" policy to reduce technical debt and manual cherry-picking.
• Continuous Improvement: Develop and iterate on robust, gated testing to ensure main-branch stability, preventing the need for complex, fragmented branching models.

What You'll Be Doing

• Release Governance & Strategic Architecture: Define, enforce code and execute promotion policies, branching strategies (e.g., Trunk-Based vs. Gitflow), and release lifecycles to ensure release isolation and stability.
• Shift-Left Quality Leadership: Drive shift-left quality initiatives by specifying and generating automated tests across all pipeline stages, ensuring quality is integrated throughout the release lifecycle rather than retrofitted.
• Release Process Standardization: Audit, unify, and standardize release documentation and governance workflows across the organization to eliminate tribal knowledge and empower the broader engineering organization.
• Release Validation & Gating: Oversee the evolution and content in all release pipelines stages to minimize branch breakages and increase release quality. Improve visibility into release metrics, ensuring stakeholders and leadership have the necessary data for rapid, informed decision-making.
• Cross-Functional Integration: Collaborate with Autonomy teams to seamlessly and safely integrate necessary fast-forward patches into release branches. Proactively manage and mitigate technical risks associated with software deployment and build compatibility.

What We're Looking For

• Experience: 5+ years of professional experience in the autonomous driving or robotics industry, specifically within release engineering or simulation.
• Autonomy Expertise: Strong understanding of autonomy systems, including Localization, Perception, Prediction, Planning, Control, and Autonomy Platforms.
• Technical Leadership: Experience working on and leading large-scale cross-functional projects and managing engineering teams.
• Engineering Foundation: BS or MS in Engineering or equivalent knowledge and work experience.
• Programming Proficiency: Proficiency with C++/Python and advanced experience with CI/CD pipelines.
• Problem-Solving Skills: Demonstrated ability to think logically, remove bias from problem evaluation, and data mine for insights on deficiencies and overlooked optimizations.
• Collaboration: Strong teamwork, communication, presentation and writing skills for working with developers, program managers, and leadership.
• Strategic Problem Solving: Proven ability to navigate complex engineering debates (e.g., Trunk-Based vs. Gitflow), provide data-driven recommendations, and lead architectural shifts.

Bonus Points (Not Required)

• Experience with Cloud Simulation scaling and cost analysis.
• Experience with Apache Airflow.
• Experience with Applied Intuition simulation tooling.
• Experience with scaled AWS applications and environments.

This role is hybrid from our Pittsburgh or Las Vegas office. It requires in-office days each week.

Full-time

Benefits

• medical
• dental
• vision
• 401k with a company match
• health saving accounts
• life insurance
• pet insurance

Salary Range

$172,000-229,000 USD

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.

Motional is a driverless technology company making autonomous vehicles a safe, reliable, and accessible reality. We're driven by something more.

Our journey is always people first.

We aren't just developing driverless cars; we're creating safer roadways, more equitable transportation options, and making our communities better places to live, work, and connect. Our team is made up of engineers, researchers, innovators, dreamers and doers, who are creating a technology with the potential to transform the way we move.

Higher purpose, greater impact.

We're creating first-of-its-kind technology that will transform transportation. To do so successfully, we must design for everyone in our cities and on our roads. We believe in building a great place to work through a progressive, global culture that is diverse, inclusive, and ensures people feel valued at every level of the organization. Diversity helps us to see the world differently; it's not only good for our business, it's the right thing to do.

Scale up, not starting up.

Our team is behind some of the industry's largest leaps forward, including the first fully-autonomous cross-country drive in the U.S, the launch of the world's first robotaxi pilot, and operation of the world's longest-standing public robotaxi fleet. We're driven to scale; we're moving towards commercialization of our technology, and we need team members who are ready to embrace change and challenges.

About the Company

Formed as a joint venture between Hyundai Motor Group and Aptiv, Motional is fundamentally changing how people move through their lives. Headquartered in Boston, Motional has operations in the U.S and Asia. For more information, visit www.Motional.com and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube.