Autonomy Release Engineer II

May’s Lead Engineers are front line problem solvers that get things done. May’s engineers have the initiative, experience, and technical skill to be able to solve problems delegated to them with little oversight.  Confidence backed by firm engineering talent and knowledge of complex systems is a must.

As a Release Autonomy Engineer located at one of our Japan sites, you will enable the successful deployment of solutions to challenging and complex problems facing vehicle autonomy.  You will support the deployment of May autonomy systems and track down and solve the release’s most difficult issues. 

Release Autonomy Engineers are extremely cross-functional and must be able to frequently adapt their roles between various areas of autonomy AND various areas outside of autonomy.  They straddle the line between the Autonomy software developers and the broader issues of Deployment, Product, company milestones and schedules.  They MUST be ready to operate within environments that often lack formal processes and they must be ready to connect the dots between technical- and non-technical organizations. Release Autonomy Engineers absolutely must identify key issues and drive problems to solution.  This often includes critically thinking through chaotic situations spanning multiple organizations, schedules, and stakeholders.  

From a technical standpoint, Release Autonomy engineers are responsible for the integrated functioning of the autonomy software release.  Engineers interact with sensor hardware, middleware, autonomy software stack, networking, health monitoring, compute platforms and electronic systems. They drive forward architectural design and hardware/software design through collaboration across other engineering groups.  Additionally, release engineers take feedback from sites, customers, riders, and turn that into metrics/instrumentation/tools to evaluate that the autonomy system is functioning and improving in a way that matters to the user.  You will be a go-to person for understanding how releases come together, be an active participant in troubleshooting merge/CI issues as well as a generalized understanding to dive into system integration issues found during release testing. 

• Take initiative to understand every aspect of the May vehicle architecture - hardware, software, networking, configurations - all of it.
• Take initiative to find and permanently solve challenging system level issues caused by the interplay between different software and hardware components.
• Troubleshoot and support solutions to challenging field issues.
• Collaborate and lead system-wide improvements when working with other teams without having direct ownership or management responsibility. 
• Design, build, and maintain the May autonomy system architecture and cross functional autonomy components.
• Assess and develop approaches that improve performance in a variety of ways (e.g. CPU performance, memory usage, disk usage, network usage).
• Assess and improve system robustness to systematic stochastic and transient issues that impact autonomous vehicle performance.
• Support other autonomy engineers in designing and integrating their components with the full May system.
• Management of software branch updates to existing software releases
• Curation of hotfixes and patches to ensure proper maintenance of deployed software at our sites
• Curation and execution of simulation suites and results to track performance across software releases to understand current performance capabilities and limitations between deployed releases as well as proposed updates
• Appreciation for production quality software - We are a product company - not a research lab!

Candidates most successful in this role typically hold the following qualifications or comparable knowledge or experience:

Required

• Minimum of 1 year of experience in autonomous robotics system engineering with a broad focus across multiple aspects of autonomous robot components
• Experience successfully navigating uncertainty and bringing stakeholders from different organizations together to form alignments when stakeholders objectives are at odds with each other
• Bachelor's degree in Robotics, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering or an applied engineering field.
• Experience ‘managing up’ 
• Strong communication skills in both English and Japanese
• Experience using analysis to form a conclusion with argumentation on critical technical issues AS WELL AS communicating this to stakeholders at different technical and management levels
• Strong programming skills in C/C++
• Experience taking components and systems through the full product lifecycle.
• Demonstrated strong troubleshooting and analytic skills at the system and subsystem level.  
• Demonstrated ability to communicate effectively and clearly about complex system behaviors, structures, and issues.
• Drive to “see for yourself” 

Desirable

• 5+ years of experience in autonomous robotic systems
• Experience managing software (branches / versions / deployments)
• Experience with autonomous cars, trucks, or similar vehicles.
• A masters or PhD degree in Robotics, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering or an applied engineering field.
• Previous experience in a startup or high performance research and development group delivering a product
• Project management experience 
• License to drive on public roads in Japan

• Standard office working conditions which includes but is not limited to:
• Prolonged sitting
• Prolonged standing
• Prolonged computer use

Travel required? -  Moderate: 11%-25%