About this Senior Program Manager role at Motional
Mission Summary:
As a Senior Program Manager, you will be responsible for the end-to-end delivery of high-complexity programs that are essential to the success of our autonomous vehicle platform. You will sit at the intersection of various technical and business workstreams, identifying gaps in cross-functional commitments and ensuring that engineering designs translate into reliable, high-quality results. In this role, you will be primarily responsible for managing testing activities across multiple modalities, teams, and geographical regions. This is a leadership-heavy role that requires a "blame-free, action-oriented" communicator who can influence multiple future quarters of organizational impact.
Key Responsibilities:
Program Strategy & Execution:
- End-to-End Ownership: Develop and maintain a comprehensive understanding of your product area, including system interdependencies and business dynamics.
- Test Management & Execution: Lead projects from initial ideation to efficient execution, ensuring all deliverables meet high standards for reliability and quality. Manage complex testing activities across multiple modalities (e.g., simulation, closed-course, public roads), engineering teams, and geographical regions.
- Risk & Priority Management: Proactively identify, highlight, and manage risks and blockers. Evaluate testing risks and adjust project direction as needed across multiple workstreams to ensure alignment with company goals.
- OKRs & KPIs: Propose and own goal-level OKRs. Demonstrate a repeated track record of impacting department-wide KPIs that set the stage for future organizational success.
Leadership, Coordination & V&V Integration:
- Development & V&V Coordination: Maintain strict coordination with the core development cycle and the formal Verification and Validation (V&V) cycle to ensure testing schedules align with engineering phase gates.
- Cross-Functional Scheduling: Coordinate work across multiple teams, ensuring clear and effective communication to achieve unified results. Actively resolve cross-functional scheduling conflicts to optimize test vehicle availability and resource allocation.
- Executive Reporting: Provide routine program updates to the director, VP, and other executive director program managers across the company to ensure alignment on testing progress and release readiness.
- Alignment & Buy-in: Build consensus and create alignment across diverse stakeholders. Explain complex trade-offs to peers and executive leadership to drive critical decision-making.
Process & Team Growth:
- Process Refinement & Efficiency Driving: Constantly challenge the status quo by refining internal processes and best practices to improve team efficiency. Advocate for optimal solutions that result in higher product quality, better yields, or lower costs through improved project effectiveness.
- Mentorship & Knowledge Sharing: Actively mentor multiple team members, fostering an environment where contributors at all levels feel empowered to participate in team decisions. Teach and guide others through internal documentation, tech talks, or internal blog posts to deepen the team's collective knowledge.
- Hiring & Growth: Serve as a sought-after and well-calibrated interviewer, trusted to make reliable hiring recommendations that strengthen the organization.
Qualifications:
- Experience: 5+ years of experience in Program/Project Management, preferably in a fast-paced hardware or software engineering environment (AV, Aerospace, or Tech).
- Education: Bachelor’s degree in Business, Management, or a technical field; PMP or Agile certification is a plus.
- Autonomy: Proven ability to work independently on defined programs with minimal guidance, driving significant project-level impact.
- Communication: Exceptional ability to communicate progress, direction, and technical trade-offs in a clear, blame-free, and action-oriented manner.
- Analytical Skills: Strong ability to use technical details to inform business dynamics and project roadmaps.
Physical Demands & Working Environment:
While performing the duties of this job, the employee is frequently required to sit, talk, or hear. The employee is occasionally required to stand and at times for long periods; walk; use hands to finger, handle, or feel; reach with hands and arms. The employee must occasionally lift and move up to 50 pounds.
The work environment characteristics described here represent those a team member encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
This role is based in our Pittsburgh or Las Vegas office and requires in-office days each week.
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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.
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.
