Weekend Test Execution PM — On‑Site Lead

Auror Limited; Pittsburgh (Allegheny County); Hybrid; USD 100,000 - 145,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus

Equity compensation

Benefits

Job summary

Aurora is seeking a Senior Program Manager, Test Execution for weekend coverage to act as the on-site escalation point across engineering workstreams. The role requires building playbooks, making timely decisions, and coordinating with leadership to keep test plans on track.

You will triage weekend issues, adjust test sequencing, and document decisions to ensure continuity for the weekday team. Strong PM experience and safety focus are essential.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in Program Management, Project Management, Product Operations, Technical Operations, or a related role.
• Demonstrated ability to operate independently and make sound first-tier decisions without real-time access to the full weekday team or leadership.
• Working knowledge across multiple engineering/test workstreams, with the ability to quickly get oriented on unfamiliar issues.
• Ability to develop a functional understanding of hardware/software stacks, including how sensors, calibration, and software versions interact to impact vehicle behavior.
• Strong organizational and written/verbal communication skills, with comfort producing clear status reports and escalating to leadership when needed.
• Safety focused, with the ability to operate effectively in environments where safety is a core requirement.
• Required to work a Thursday-Monday schedule, including weekend on-site presence.
• Ability to operate effectively in a fast-paced, evolving environment with shifting priorities and incomplete information.
• Comfortable making resourceful, hands-on calls under incomplete information - improvising a workaround, reallocating an available asset, or adjusting a test sequence in the moment rather than escalating by default.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the direct escalation point for all Program Managers' workstreams during the Saturday-Sunday coverage window, resolving first-tier test execution questions and issues and looping in the right people (Engineering, Safety, Operations, leadership) when they exceed first-tier scope.
• Own and execute pre-built response playbooks and flag gaps in those playbooks back to the weekday teams
• Define and work within a decision-authority matrix: know without checking which calls you're empowered to make solo, which need a same-day heads-up to leadership, and which require an immediate escalation before proceeding.
• Make real-time, hands-on calls on resource substitution - reassigning available assets, adjusting test sequencing, or re-routing around a blocked track/route - to keep the weekend plan moving without waiting for Monday.
• Support test execution questions and escalations across the full breadth of engineering areas the team covers, not just a single workstream.
• Review the previous week's plan against actual execution and author the weekly status/summary report on how the week went
• Recommend and make pivots to the upcoming week's plan based on weekend execution results, blockers, and on-the-ground changes (weather, asset downtime, route/track issues).
• Track and communicate blockers, delays, and anomalies to stakeholders in a timely manner, using judgment on when an issue needs to go straight to leadership versus being resolved at the PM level.
• Maintain clear documentation of weekend decisions, pivots, and escalations so the Monday-Friday team has full continuity into the new week.
• Contribute to a living contingency playbook: after each weekend, document any novel failure mode encountered and the resolution

Skills

Independent Work

Multi-Workstream Knowledge

Hardware/Software Stack

Safety Focus

Communication Skills

Job description

Aurora is seeking a Senior Program Manager, Test Execution for weekend coverage to act as the on-site escalation point across engineering workstreams. The role requires building playbooks, making timely decisions, and coordinating with leadership to keep test plans on track.

You will triage weekend issues, adjust test sequencing, and document decisions to ensure continuity for the weekday team. Strong PM experience and safety focus are essential.