Principal Platform Engineer

Mission Summary As a Principal Engineer within the Platform Engineering group, you will serve as the primary architect for Motional’s global cloud and hybrid infrastructure. Your mission is to evolve our current R&D environment into a hardened, cost‑efficient, and scalable commercial backbone. You will lead the technical strategy for our hybrid cloud migration and ensure our internal frameworks provide the velocity required for rapid AV deployment.

What you’ll be doing: Architect and drive the execution of our hybrid cloud strategy. You will design the networking, security, and compute abstraction layers that allow seamless workload mobility between on‑premises high‑performance computing (HPC) and AWS. Serve as the primary architect for our Kubernetes‑based developer framework.

You will identify and implement core improvements to the framework to enhance scalability, cost tracking and access control, reduce configuration complexity, and increase developer velocity. Lead organization‑wide initiatives to harden service reliability. You will define the standards for observability, failover strategies, and production‑grade stability across all platform‑layer services.

Prototype and deploy GenAI‑focused tooling and agents to automate Platform Engineering tasks. This includes leveraging LLMs for automated incident response, predictive infrastructure scaling, and intelligent log analysis. Act as the final technical authority for infrastructure decisions, ensuring all new platform services align with long‑term scalability and security goals.

What we’re looking for: Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience) 12+ years in Software or Infrastructure Engineering, with significant experience in a Principal or Architect capacity Deep, expert‑level knowledge of Kubernetes internals and ecosystem (EKS, Operators (KubeRay, ArgoWorkflow, Airflow), Service Mesh, GitOps) Proven track record of designing and migrating complex workloads between on‑prem data centers and AWS Experience with Infrastructure‑as‑Code (Terraform/CloudFormation, Terraform Cloud/Spacelift/Atlantis) and advanced observability tooling (OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog) Expert in architecting AI‑driven operations, leveraging LLMs and agentic workflows to automate incident response, predictive scaling, and intelligent system observability Demonstrated ability to influence technical roadmaps across an entire engineering organization and mentor senior technical staff. Bonus Points (not required): Expert‑level experience managing and architecting solutions using Equinix datacenter products and services( e.g., Equinix Fabric, Network Edge, Metal) to enable high‑speed hybrid cloud connectivity (AWS Direct Connect) Prior experience in the Autonomous Vehicle, Robotics, or large‑scale IoT/Fleet Management industries. Experience leading technical projects in a globally distributed team Proven expertise in CI/CD orchestration, build systems (Bazel), frameworks 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.

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$200,000—$275,000 USD 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.

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