Staff Technical Program Manager, Stack AV
Autonomous systems for the transportation industry
Be an early applicant
Autonomous systems for the transportation industry
201-500 employees
Be an early applicant
201-500 employees
Company mission
To revolutionize the transportation industry through the deployment of advanced autonomous systems.
Role
Who you are
- Strong experience as a hands on engineer prior to becoming a TPM in automotive, aerospace, or other appropriate technology domain. Self-driving and robotics experience is NOT required
- Understanding of complex systems integration in one or more domains mentioned above. Able to adapt and learn new technologies quickly
- Familiarity with standard TPM tooling like JIRA, Google Slides, Sheets or equivalent
- Familiarity with typical SW development lifecycles
- Excellent communication and teamwork skills to build trusting relationships across all levels and departments
- Hyper organized mindset with an acute focus on details required. Must bring structure to where there is not
- Must be able to listen to complex discussions and accurately summarize the conclusions and action items
What the job involves
- The Technical Program Management (TPM) staff is a close-knit team with broad experience across robotics/AI including self-driving cars, government robotics, startups, and commercial robot deployments
- Led by a former founder of a successful robotics company, the team is passionate about partnering with technical teams to launch AI and autonomy products by leading cross-functional internal and external workstreams
- These workstreams are the backbone of Stack’s forward progress as a company. This is a chance to work with industry leaders taking self-driving trucks to commercial scale
- Partner with technical leads to manage end to end workstreams for the core autonomy capabilities and the tools and infrastructure that support driverless operations
- Develop a detailed tactical schedule as well as high level long term plans for the workstreams assigned balancing execution to the current priority needs while making progress towards the long term vision
- Keep granular track of and report on the progress toward product milestones. Ask tough questions to keep the team focused and on track
- Identify bottlenecks / limitations in team deliverables and partner closely with cross functional teams on any dependencies to architect solutions
- Maintain and track risks as well as uncertainties and develop contingency plans to ensure the workstreams do not stall. Be prepared to handle multiple workstreams as part of your scope (adjusted by level hired)
- Drive teams to understand scope and schedule details to accomplish demanding timelines efficiently
- Constantly evaluate tradeoffs that need to be made in a resource constrained environment, and flag issues where a decision is required. Facilitate buy in across teams and make recommendations when needed to get the team out of a stalemate
- Develop relationships with your cross functional stakeholders that will allow you to push on a technical path forward as needed through constructive discussions and brainstorming
- Report out on behalf of the workstreams assigned in various forums e.g. standups, exec reviews, all hands etc. Help the teams pull together relevant information needed to present to the broader org from time to time
- Work with leadership on engineering process improvements
- Dive into new technical areas, learn the lingo, and fill leadership and process gaps as discovered to promote project success
Our take
Driver shortages, decelerating efficiency and broad safety concerns have plagued the US trucking industry for some time now. High operating costs paired with increasingly scrutinized high emissions are leading to concern over the future of the logistics and goods transport market. Stack AV’s autonomous trucking solution aims to lighten the load of these issues, using AI to create smart supply chains and autonomous driving systems.
Its founding team have long been exploring the possibilities of autonomous transport through combined experience with Uber, and Google smart cars and shared founding roles at Argo AI, a similar company that disbanded in 2022 after it failed to become profitable for shareholders. Hopefully, however, the launch of Stack AV will balance the decades of experience as well as hard lessons learnt from the failed predecessor company and will find new ways to make autonomous driving tech a sustainable investment.
With a staggering $1 billion invested in Stack AV by SoftBank in 2023, the company is well-armoured for the time being. Its main competitor is Aurora, which underwent a successful IPO in 2021 but never achieved the high level of early funding that Stack AV did. It’s a promising start then for the Argo AI veterans' new venture.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Company
Funding (1 round)
Sep 2023
$1bn
SERIES A
Total funding: $1bn
Company HQ
Downtown, Pittsburgh, PA
Leadership
Brian Salesky
(CEO)Previously CEO of Argo AI, Director of Hardware Development for self-driving cars at Google, Principal Commercialization Specialist at the National Robotics Engineering Center, and Technical Program Manager at Google.
Peter Rander
(President)Previously President and Co-Founder at Argo AI, Engineering Lead at Uber and Principal Commercialization Specialist at the National Robotics Engineering Center.
Brett Browning
(CTO)Previously CTO at Argo AI, Senior Engineering Manager at Uber Advanced Technologies Center, Co-Founder at Mine Vision Systems and a Senior Systems Scientist at Carnegie Mellon University.
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