Senior Release Engineer

Mission Summary:

As a Release Engineer at Motional, you will join the newly formed Release team, responsible for creating our customer-facing external software releases. You will be responsible for executing the technical vision for our software release and validation infrastructure. In this role, you will work hands-on to build, maintain, and automate the pipelines that ensure the safety and reliability of software deployed across our autonomous vehicle fleet. You will be instrumental in translating strategic release goals into efficient, scalable engineering workflows.

What You’ll Be Doing:

Release Gating & Validation: Collaborate with the Release team to implement and enforce "shift-left" quality gates, ensuring that only stable, well-validated code reaches release branches.

Cross-Functional Support: Partner with Autonomy, System Readiness & Performance, and Project Manager teams to streamline the integration of patches and bug fixes, acting as the primary point of contact for release-related build inquiries.

Branching & Governance: Assist in executing the organization’s release strategy (e.g., maintaining clean branching models) to ensure release isolation and stability.

Data-Driven Optimization: Contribute to the visibility of release metrics, identifying bottlenecks in the build process and proposing data-backed solutions to improve release team and developer velocity.

Automation & Tooling: Write and maintain automation scripts to enforce release quality, minimize manual overhead, and manage build compatibility across diverse autonomy stacks.

What We’re Looking For:

Engineering Foundation: BS or MS in Engineering or equivalent knowledge and work experience.

Technical Proficiency: Strong proficiency in Git, Python; advanced experience with CI/CD infrastructure (e.g., GitLab CI, Jenkins).

Domain Knowledge: Experience in the autonomous driving sector, robotics, or complex software release environments.

Collaborative Problem-Solver: Demonstrated ability to work within a highly technical team, translate complex requirements into actionable code, and communicate effectively with cross-functional stakeholders.

Operational Mindset: A focus on building maintainable, "production-ready" systems and a desire to improve engineering workflows rather than just patching issues.

Bonus Points:

Experience with Cloud Simulation scaling and AWS application environments.

Experience with Apache Airflow or similar workflow orchestration tools.

Experience with simulation-based validation frameworks (e.g., Applied Intuition).

 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.

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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 $149,000 — $198,500 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 …