Director, Lead Project Engineer; PE), Autonomous Driving Platform Delivery

Arriver Software, LLC

Engineering Group, Engineering Group >
Systems Engineering

Qualcomm is seeking an experienced and highly influential engineering leader to serve as Director, Lead Project Engineer (PE), Autonomous Driving Platform Delivery. This role represents the highest level of technical ownership for strategic Autonomous Driving (AD) customer programs and is accountable for the successful delivery of end-to-end AD platform solutions from initial engagement through vehicle production launch.

The Director PE serves as the executive technical leader and single point of accountability across all engineering functions involved in customer program execution, including AD Stack Delivery, Systems Engineering, AD Core Software, Platform Solutions, Customer Engineering, Validation, Integration, Release Engineering, Safety, Quality, and external ecosystem partners.

This individual drives technical strategy, organizational alignment, execution excellence, risk management, and delivery predictability across highly complex, cross-functional programs. The Director PE partners closely with executives, customers, Tier 1 suppliers, software integration partners, and internal engineering organizations to ensure successful deployment of autonomous driving solutions on customer target platforms and production vehicles.

The ideal candidate combines deep technical expertise in automotive software platforms, systems integration, validation, and vehicle deployment with exceptional leadership, stakeholder management, and program execution capabilities.

End-to-End Program Technical Ownership

• Own overall technical strategy, execution, and delivery of large-scale Autonomous Driving customer programs.
• Establish program-level technical objectives, success criteria, execution frameworks, and delivery plans.
• Drive alignment of engineering milestones, deliverables, dependencies, and priorities across all contributing organizations.
• Ensure execution remains aligned with customer commitments, product roadmaps, quality objectives, and business goals.
• Serve as the primary technical decision-maker and escalation point for critical program issues.
• Provide executive leadership visibility into technical health, key dependencies, risks, issue resolution plans, and program readiness.
• Drive execution predictability through structured governance, technical reviews, and milestone management.
• Ensure successful customer acceptance, deployment readiness, and production launch.

• Cross-Organizational Engineering Leadership
• Provide leadership and technical direction across:

• AD Stack Delivery
• Systems Engineering
• Customer Engineering
• Validation and Integration
• Release Engineering
• Safety and Quality organizations

• Act as the primary engineering stakeholder toward:

• AD Core Software
• Platform Solutions
• Tier 1 partners
• Software Integration partners
• Customer engineering organizations

Key responsibilities include:

• Establishing unified execution models across multiple customer programs.
• Ensuring efficient utilization and integration of deliverables from core software, platform, Tier 1 suppliers, and customer teams.
• Driving accountability for committed deliverables and milestones.
• Resolving organizational conflicts, priority misalignment, and resource constraints.
• Managing critical cross-functional dependencies and execution risks.
• Facilitating executive-level technical tradeoffs and engineering decisions.
• Aligning all participating organizations around common program objectives and delivery commitments.

Platform Enablement and Integration Leadership

• Own integration strategy for deployment of Qualcomm AD software on customer target platforms.
• Drive hardware, software, infrastructure, tooling, and laboratory readiness across all phases of development.
• Ensure successful integration of platform software, middleware, AD applications, and customer-specific software components.
• Provide executive oversight of platform stabilization and integration issue resolution.
• Drive achievement of platform readiness criteria required for validation, qualification, and deployment milestones.
• Partner with platform and systems teams to proactively identify and mitigate integration risks.
• Ensure platform maturity supports efficient advancement into validation and vehicle deployment phases.

Pre-Integration Environment (PIE) Leadership

• Own readiness and execution of all customer and partner Pre-Integration Environment (PIE) activities.
• Define integration strategies, validation objectives,…