Mission Summary:
We are seeking an exceptionally talented Principal Engineer for the Platform & Apps Group. This critical role is dedicated to maximizing engineering velocity and effectiveness by defining the architecture and governance across all Developer Platform functions: Platform Engineering (SRE/DevOps), Engineering Enablement (Bazel/CI/CD), and the new Platform Development efforts.
You will be the Chief Architect responsible for setting the technical vision for our core build systems, defining the architecture for our internal tools, and ensuring technical excellence that scales with the entire organization. Your influence will be purely technical, driving architectural standards across the Platform & Apps group.
What you’ll be doing:
1. Chief Architect & Technical Strategy (Developer Platform)Architectural Vision & Governance: Define and own the multi-year technical architecture and standards for the entire Developer Platform ecosystem, ensuring resilience, performance, and scalability across all internal tools and infrastructure.
Technical Authority: Act as the technical decision-maker and expert consultant for complex architecture challenges within Platform Engineering and Enablement, ensuring alignment across technical roadmaps.
Engineering Quality: Champion and architect solutions that enforce technical standards, drive code quality, and automate governance across the entire developer lifecycle.
Mentorship & Elevation: Elevate the organization's technical capability by providing expert-level consulting, conducting rigorous design reviews, and introducing advanced architectural patterns to all engineering teams within the Platform Group.
2. Platform Engineering & Enablement Expertise
Core Systems Mastery: Own the architectural evolution and technical governance of the mission-critical Bazel build system and associated toolchains, ensuring optimized, reproducible, and hermetic builds for our core product.
CI/CD & SRE Excellence: Define the technical standards for Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices and CI/CD pipeline governance (GitLab) for critical developer services, focusing on optimizing efficiency, uptime, and developer experience (DX).
Productivity Strategy: Architect and lead the implementation of systems for measuring and improving engineering performance, utilizing established metrics frameworks (e.g., DORA, FLOW, SPACE).
3. Cross-Platform Standards & Oversight
Architectural Standard Bearer: Establish and enforce unified technical standards and best practices for cloud security, operational monitoring, and reliability that govern development across the entire Platform & Apps organization.
High-Level Consulting: Provide expert technical consultation on the highest-risk architectural decisions related to Cloud Applications, focusing solely on adherence to platform standards and risk mitigation.
Cloud Efficiency: Drive technical initiatives for achieving cloud resource optimization and cost efficiency across all AWS-hosted services within the Platform & Apps portfolio.
What we’re looking for:
12+ years of progressive experience in Software Engineering, with a significant focus on Platform Engineering, Developer Experience, or Build/Release Engineering.
5+ years acting as a Principal Engineer, Chief Architect, or equivalent Individual Contributor role, demonstrating the ability to set technical strategy and drive architectural initiatives across multiple functional teams.
Core Systems Mastery: Mandatory expert-level proficiency in advanced build systems (Bazel), complex CI/CD pipelines (GitLab CI/GitHub Actions), and modern configuration/deployment technologies.
Platform & Tooling Architecture: Deep expertise in architecting, designing, and scaling complex internal developer platforms, including experience with Developer Portals (e.g., Backstage) and internal service-oriented applications built with Node.js/Go/Python.
Cloud & Systems Expertise: Strong knowledge of Cloud Architecture (AWS preferred), distributed systems design, SRE principles, and performance engineering.
Exceptional technical communication, negotiation, and influence skills with the ability to articulate and defend complex architectural concepts to both technical and executive audiences.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
Bonus Points (not required):
- Prior experience in the Autonomous Vehicle, Robotics, or large-scale IoT/Fleet Management industries.
- Direct experience architecting and customizing a Backstage-based developer portal in a large-scale engineering organization.
- Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform/CloudFormation) and advanced observability tooling (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog).
- Proven expertise in defining and implementing DORA or other engineering performance metrics frameworks.
We encourage a hybrid schedule with in-office time at one of our locations in Boston, Pittsburgh, or Las Vegas to support collaboration, or this role can be fully remote.
The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a wide range of compensation factors including but not limited to specific skills, experience and expertise, role location, certifications, licenses, and business needs. The estimated compensation range listed in this job posting reflects base salary only. This role may include additional forms of compensation such as a bonus or company equity. The recruiter assigned to this role can share more information about the specific compensation and benefit details associated with this role during the hiring process.
Candidates for certain positions are eligible to participate in Motional’s benefits program. Motional’s benefits include but are not limited to medical, dental, vision, 401k with a company match, health saving accounts, life insurance, pet insurance, and more.
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.
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.
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.
Top Skills
What We Do
Our team is commercializing a world-class driverless system. The Motional team is behind some of the industry’s largest leaps forward in the last decade, 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 most-established public robotaxi fleet. Strategically formed by Hyundai Motor Group, one of the world’s largest vehicle manufacturers offering smart mobility solutions, and Aptiv, a global technology leader in advanced safety, electrification, and vehicle connectivity, Motional is fundamentally changing how people move through their lives.
Why Work With Us
Our leadership team has been working in this industry for decades and includes renown early innovators in driverless technology. We are creating a future where transportation is safe, reliable, and accessible. Join our team in revolutionizing the industry that will change how the world moves.
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