Principal Engineer Team Lead, Behavior Safety & Metrics

The Behavior team at Motional is responsible for developing the prediction, planning, and sim agent capabilities that enable our autonomous vehicles to navigate complex, dynamic environments safely, comfortably, and confidently. Our work spans understanding and anticipating the behavior of other road users, making intelligent driving decisions, and generating safe, efficient, and natural vehicle trajectories. We combine cutting-edge machine learning, robotics, large-scale data, and rigorous evaluation to advance the capabilities of our production autonomous driving system.

We are looking for a highly motivated, technically strong engineer to lead evaluation initiatives across Prediction and Planning. In this role, you will define how we measure, understand, and improve autonomous driving behavior, bridging the gap between individual model performance and real-world system outcomes. You will drive the development of advanced evaluation methodologies, performance metrics, data mining strategies, and scalable tools to identify system limitations, assess dataset coverage, and guide model development.

You will work closely with machine learning engineers, roboticists, safety, and cross-functional teams to tackle challenging, open-ended problems and establish the quantitative foundations that drive improvements in safety, comfort, and driving performance. Your work will directly influence how we develop, evaluate, and deploy the next generation of autonomous driving capabilities.

What You’ll Do

• Act as the central authority on evaluation for our Behaviors teams, bridging the gap between model development and system-level autonomous behavior.
• Drive the evaluation strategy for our prediction and planning models, including open-loop and simulation-based assessments.
• Design and implement advanced metrics to measure model impact on overall system behavior, leveraging ML-based approaches for robust, end-to-end model evaluation.
• Incorporate concepts such as counterfactual reasoning and reaction time analysis into our evaluation frameworks to better understand system behavior.
• Develop the strategy for data mining and assess the coverage of our training and evaluation datasets across Prediction and Planning.
• Build necessary tooling and pipelines, identify gaps in our processes, and collaborate with machine learning engineers and roboticists to solve open-ended problems.
• Cross-functional collaboration: Partner with Safety, Infrastructure, Operations, Legal, and the other Systems teams to drive design improvements and ensure features generate a net positive effect on system safety, comfort, and assertiveness and meet our launch criteria.

What We’re Looking For:

• Bachelor’s degree and 7+ years of experience in Computer Science, Systems Engineering, Robotics, or a similar technical field (or Master’s/PhD and 5+ years of experience).
• Strong foundation in probability/statistics, data science, and scientific rigor applied to complex, multi-agent systems.
• Proficiency in Python, SQL, and data analysis (visualization, statistics) in production environments.
• Experience defining performance targets and acceptance criteria spanning safety, comfort, and assertiveness, producing the analysis and evidence to justify them.
• Demonstrated ability to tackle technical challenges, analyze cross-disciplinary problems, and propose innovative, maintainable solutions.
• Proven ability to lead initiatives, drive alignment, and ensure stakeholder engagement throughout the development process.
• Working expertise in hazard and safety analysis methods such as STPA, HAZOP, FMEA, and hazard analysis and risk assessment.

Ideally, You Also Have:

• Experience using statistical and ML methods to quantify performance, detect regressions, and reveal patterns of system behavior at scale.
• Deep experience with Prediction and/or Planning for autonomous robotics, including evaluating ML-based systems in production environments.
• Experience with public AV datasets and benchmarks (e.g., Waymo Open Dataset, nuScenes, etc.) and a deep understanding of standard industry metrics for trajectory forecasting and motion planning.
• Prior experience using or building data pipelines at scale.
• Excellent communication skills, capable of articulating complex concepts to technical peers and executive leadership alike, with a proven ability to collaborate across distributed teams.
• Familiarity with SOTIF, ISO 26262, UL4600, and AVSC behavior competencies and other industry standards.

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.

Salary Range

$240,000—$330,000 USD

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.