Principal Engineer Team Lead, Safety & Targets

Mission Summary:The Systems Readiness and Performance team is the crucial bridge between software development and real-world deployment. We are responsible for driving system design, for verifying and validating the autonomy stack, and for defining, measuring, and validating system performance targets. We work closely with stakeholders in autonomy, infrastructure, and operations to build the definitive safety case for the commercial launch of our fully driverless IONIQ 5 robotaxis in Las Vegas later this year.

We are looking for a passionate, self-starting engineering leader to lead the Safety & Targets team within the SRP organization. This team owns the safety functions and the quantitative performance targets that gate our commercial launch. We develop and validate Motional ’s critical safety systems, including collision detection and response, imminent collision handling, and high-authority braking and we own the benchmark program that defines acceptable performance across all three dimensions our riders and the public experience: safety, comfort, and assertiveness. We set those targets against human driving, using human crash and naturalistic driving data, evasive maneuver modeling, discomfort modeling, and predicted crash-rate analysis. The team produces the systems engineering evidence (hazard analysis, STPA, FMEA, requirements, and coverage argumentation) that underwrites our safety case and our regulatory reporting.

We are seeking a hands-on Principal Engineer Team Lead to drive the design, validation, and scaling of these safety functions and performance targets, grounded in real-world crash and on-road data, large-scale simulation, and closed-course testing. You will lead a high-performing team whose work directly determines where and how our vehicles operate.
What You’ll Do:

- Own Motional ’s safety critical functions: Drive the development and maturation of collision detection and response and imminent collision handling across autonomy, remote vehicle assistance, and operational functions. Define the requirements, thresholds, and response behaviors, then prove them out.

- Own the benchmark program across safety, comfort, and assertiveness: Establish and expand human driving benchmarks for all three dimensions across every key capability area, not safety alone. Close the gap where capabilities have launch criteria but no benchmark, and convert each benchmark into measurable acceptance criteria that autonomy teams can implement against.Advance our next-generation evasive maneuver and preventability modeling to enable direct comparison against human drivers in imminent collision situations.

- Own Coverage and Gap analysis: Define what sufficient coverage for our validation looks test suites look like, identify gaps and work cross functionally to close them

- Deliver the safety case evidence: Own the systems engineering lifecycle deliverables such as hazard analysis, STPA, HAZOP, FMEA, requirements, and coverage for safety critical systems. Sustain and expand safety case claims through external assessment and regulatory review.

- Scale through tooling and automation: Productionize crash database analysis, collision event ingestion and labeling, and automated continuous monitoring reports so safety insight scales faster than fleet miles.

- Lead and scale: Mentor and grow a high-performing engineering team. Foster a culture of technical excellence, scientific rigor, and data-driven decision-making.

- Cross-functional collaboration: Partner with Autonomy, 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 Systems Engineering, Functional Safety, Autonomous Systems, or Robotics, with deep expertise in one and working knowledge of the others. Or Master’s degre