Staff Technical Product Program Manager, Architecture Fallback Strategy

Aurora

San Francisco, California

Full Time

Posted April 16, 2026

$181k - $262k

Not Specified

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Job Description

The role involves managing and coordinating the development of hardware and software architectures for autonomous vehicle systems, working closely with engineering teams and stakeholders to ensure technological and business objectives are met, while driving architectural improvements and ensuring system safety and reliability.

Key Responsibilities

Partner with senior engineering leaders to develop architectural proposals and evaluate new technologies.
Coordinate with engineering teams to ensure architecture aligns with business objectives and hardware transitions.
Transform complex technical challenges into actionable architectural solutions.
Drive the definition, recommendation, decision-making, and execution of major architectural initiatives.
Develop detailed engineering plans for architectural projects supporting hardware and software systems.
Evaluate and integrate vendor-supplied fallback systems to ensure system safety and reliability.
Lead architectural improvements to autonomy stacks for enhanced onboard execution at scale.
Facilitate executive program reviews and ensure alignment on architectural progress and goals.
Identify and remove obstacles to team execution, balancing priorities to maintain project momentum.

Requirements

Minimum of 5 years experience as a Technical Program Manager, Product Manager, or Engineering Manager in autonomous systems, robotics, embedded systems, or software development, with an architecture focus.
Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Math, Information Systems, or a related area.
Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to adjust communication based on audience, including senior executives.
Strong technical aptitude and an ability to understand complex technical designs, software development lifecycle, challenges, and risks, with the ability to work closely with engineers.
Strong experience in project management with practical familiarity with both Agile and Waterfall methodologies and the flexibility to adapt and apply them when appropriate to improve and not hinder team execution velocity, quality, and efficacy.
Ability to work in Mountain View, CA, with occasional travel expected to support vendor conversations and cross-functional team alignment.
Experience evaluating and integrating vendor-supplied fallback systems.
Experience leading the development of architectural proposals, evaluating new technologies, and executing efforts to de-risk architectural decisions across hardware and software systems.
Experience coordinating with various engineering teams and departments to ensure architecture meets business objectives and supports hardware transitions.
Experience transforming complex, ambiguous challenges into actionable architectural solutions and improvements that can be implemented by teams across the organization.
Experience driving successful definitions, recommendations, decisions, execution, and delivery of major architectural initiatives, including foundational toolchain and performance efforts for automotive SoC-based compute platforms, optimizing architecture for scale-generation vehicle platforms and hardware kits, and developing fallback systems for safety and cost-effectiveness.
Experience leading architectural improvements to autonomy stacks to enable more efficient onboard execution at scale.
Ability to develop detailed and credible engineering plans for architectural projects.
Proactive in identifying and removing obstacles to unblock team execution and balancing competing priorities, escalating when necessary to maintain momentum.
Desirable: Experience with Pytorch, Tensorrt, CUDA, DRIVE OS, big software platform migrations, hardware resource optimization, complex autonomous systems, functional safety, system safety, or safety engineering, and managing programs with internal and external third-party stakeholders.