Principal Engineering Manager

Mission Summary: As a Senior Manager for Test Engineering, you will lead technical areas and the managers and senior leads who run them. You are accountable for the performance, delivery, and health of those teams, and for one plan tied to company objectives. The job is people leadership, priority and resource decisions, and cross-functional alignment on a three-to-six-month horizon. Area leads own day-to-day technical execution. You set direction, clear obstacles, and hold the organization to safe, high-quality results. Essential Duties: People leadership and development: Lead the managers and senior individual contributors responsible for the five Test Engineering areas. Set expectations, give timely feedback, and run performance reviews. Coach those leaders so they can develop their own people. Support development goals and name stretch opportunities early. Address performance issues in partnership with HR, and handle difficult conversations directly. Own talent planning for the organization: hiring, onboarding, retention of critical knowledge, skill gaps, and backup coverage, with your manager and HR. Recommend compensation, merit, and promotions for your teams. Build an engaged team. Recognize results, and communicate a clear view of what the organization is here to do. Delivery and operating accountability: Set goals across all areas that roll up to company and department objectives, and follow them through to results. Plan and lead delivery on a three-to-six-month horizon. Reset plans and priorities when headcount, scope, or operations change. Keep several strategic and tactical efforts moving at once, pointed at the same organizational objectives. Run an operating rhythm that shows status, risk, and roadblocks across all areas. Guide teams on how to remove blockers, and escalate when the decision sits above the team. Use company policy to make decisions. Bring Legal, HR, or Procurement in when a question needs their guidance. Manage change and the stakeholders affected by it. One-team collaboration: Align goals across all areas so Test Engineering works as one organization, with company outcomes ahead of any single area. Partner with Product, Software Engineering, Safety, and adjacent functions on priorities, quality risk, and release readiness. Resolve complex or loosely defined cross-functional issues that span process, systems, and working relationships. Represent Test Engineering to senior and executive leadership: status, risk, and the decisions you need from them. Communicate company, department, and team context to your own organization without waiting to be asked. Technical guidance: Provide enough technical guidance to set priorities, judge plans, and advise teams on execution. The expected depth is equivalent to a strong individual contributor in the discipline, applied through your leads. Make sure important test approaches and designs are reviewed by the right experts before teams commit, and steer improvements when plans are thin or still ambiguous. Area leads own frameworks, automation, test architecture, and day-to-day technical decisions. What success looks like: All areas deliver against shared objectives on a three-to-six-month horizon. Leaders under you coach their teams, address performance, and keep critical skills in the organization. Stakeholders hear one Test Engineering position on priorities, risk, and readiness. Quality issues surface early, have an owner, and get resolved through the right team. Qualifications: Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. Proven experience managing engineering teams, including experience managing other managers or senior leads. A track record of owning team results, headcount and priority tradeoffs, and goals tied to organizational objectives. Clear written and verbal communication, including presentations to senior leadership. Sound judgment on performance, staffing, and cross-team conflict. Working familiarity with test engineering in complex, safety-relevant systems — enough to guide prioritization, quality risk, and release decisions. Deep specialist expertise in any one test domain is welcome. It is not required. Physical Demands: 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. Working Environment: 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. While performing the duties of this job, the team member is regularly exposed to outside weather conditions, road conditions, and pedestrian traffic. The team member is regularly exposed to mechanical and computer parts. The team member is occasionally exposed to fumes and airborne particles. The noise level in the environment is low to moderate. Motional AD LLC is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer, and we welcome all qualified applicants. All applicants will receive impartial consideration regarding race, sex, color, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, genetic data, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, or another legally protected status. Motional AD LLC is a Drug-free workplace. #LI-LB1 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 $176,000 — $242,000 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 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 thro