Director, Engineering - Autonomy

Director, Engineering - Autonomy Department: Engineering Team: Engineering Location: Sunnyvale, United States Type: Full-Time **About the Role** As the Director of Engineering - Autonomy, you will provide the strategic leadership and executive vision for the teams responsible for major components of the core autonomy system and its safety architectures. You will build and scale a world-class organization dedicated to advancing Physical AI, focusing on edge-deployed machine learning, deterministic safety fallbacks, and real-time execution. Rather than building a traditional closed ecosystem, your teams will develop the robust onboard intelligence and safety guards required to safely evaluate next-generation models, benchmark autonomous capabilities, and collect high-value, long-tail data in complex real-world environments. Operating at the intersection of advanced research and rigorous systems engineering, you will hold ultimate accountability for ensuring that these core system components maneuver safely, predictably, and intelligently on physical hardware. **What You’ll Do** - **Executive Leadership & Strategy:** Define the technical vision and organizational roadmap for major components of the core autonomy system. You will align complex technical goals with Uber’s overarching mission to accelerate the broader autonomous ecosystem - **Core AI & Safety Architecture:** Direct the development of robust edge software, guiding the integration of advanced ML models with deterministic, rule-based safety fallbacks. Ensure the system exhibits strictly compliant, collision-free operations while adhering to rigorous real-time compute and kinematic constraints on the vehicle - **Research & Evaluation Focus:** Champion the transition of cutting-edge AI into production-ready software designed specifically to safely orchestrate vehicle operations for advanced research, ecosystem benchmarking, and scaled data collection mission - **Organizational Growth:** Build, manage, and mentor a high-performing organization of engineering managers, principal engineers, and technical leaders, fostering a culture