Director of Data Science
Motional · Boston, Massachusetts, United States; Las Vegas, Nevada, United States; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States; Remote U.S.
About this role
**Director of Data Science** Motional is a leading autonomous driving company on a mission to make driverless vehicles a safe, reliable, and accessible reality—backed by Hyundai Motor Group. The **Systems Readiness and Performance** team bridges software development and real-world deployment. You’ll help drive system design, verify and validate the autonomy stack, and define, measure, and validate system performance targets—supporting the safety case for the commercial launch of Motional’s fully driverless IONIQ 5 robotaxis. --- ### Mission Summary As **Director of Data Science**, you’ll lead the strategic vision and execution for extracting intelligence from **petabyte-scale on-road fleet data** and simulation ecosystems. You’ll build advanced data-driven methodologies, develop predictive and generative models, and serve as the primary analytical anchor for Systems Readiness and Performance/Metrics—supporting the broader company with statistical rigor that translates raw road data into **high-fidelity performance metrics** for launch readiness and safety-critical decisions. --- ### What You’ll Be Doing - **Rapid Operational Analytics:** Execute fast-turnaround investigations on emergent fleet issues, converting real-time operational data into high-impact insights for launch decisions. - **Advanced Exposure Modeling:** Build complex statistical models to evaluate vehicle safety and performance across diverse environmental variables and Operational Design Domains (ODDs). - **Cross-Functional Partnership:** Serve as the primary analytical anchor for Systems and Autonomy teams (Perception, Prediction, Planning). - **Executive Artifacts:** Distill raw telemetry and rapid-response findings into high-level strategy documents, visualizations, and dashboards. - **Team Leadership:** Mentor and scale a dedicated **four-person team**, pairing rapid analytical agility with absolute scientific rigor. --- ### What We’re Looking For - **Industry Experience:** 10+ years leading data science or applied AI/ML initiatives; at least 5 years scaling data-driven programs for autonomous driving, robotics, or complex safety-critical engineering systems. - **Educational Background:** Master’s degree or PhD in Data Science, Computer Science, Robotics, Mathematics, Physics, or another highly quantitative field. - **Expertise in Advanced Analytics:** Strong foundation in statistical analysis, density estimation, hypothesis testing, uncertainty quantification, and causal reasoning. - **Technical Proficiency:** Mastery of **Python** and **SQL**, data science infrastructure libraries, plus experience with **Transformers** and distributed compute scaling frameworks (e.g., **Ray**, **AWS**). - **System Deconstruction:** Track record translating ambiguous real-world performance questions into structured metric designs and concrete solution architectures. - **Exceptional Communication:** Ability to communicate technical data patterns and trade-offs into compelling strategies for cross-functional engineering peers and C-suite executives. - **Collaborative Leadership:** Ability to influence across teams, resolve technical disagreements, and establish best practices around data integrity. --- ### Bonus Points (Not Required) - Experience designing reward functions or applying **Inverse Reinforcement Learning (IRL)** to evaluate human-like driving intent, assertiveness, and comfort. - Familiarity with physical AI ecosystems, open-weights **Vision-Language Models (VL
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