Engineering Manager - Deep Learning Optimization
We’re Cruise, the self-driving ride-hailing service.
We are building the world’s most advanced self-driving vehicles to safely connect people to the places, things, and experiences they care about. We believe self-driving vehicles will help save lives, reshape cities, give back time in transit, and restore freedom of movement for many.
At Cruise, our engineers have opportunities to grow and develop while learning from leaders at the cutting-edge of their fields. With a culture of internal mobility, there's opportunity to thrive in a variety of disciplines. This is a place for dreamers and doers to succeed.
If you are looking to solve one of today’s most complex engineering challenges, see the results of your work in hundreds of self-driving cars, and make a positive impact in the world starting in our cities, join us.
The AV software stack heavily relies on machine learning and deep learning techniques to perform a variety of tasks, each with different requirements of hardware/compute resources. Throughout the life-cycle of each machine learning model, skilled ML engineers (on both training and inference sides) work closely to prepare it for a robust, scalable, and compute/power efficient inferencing on a resource-constrained hardware accelerator. Such a close working relationship is key to a fast and successful deployment of intelligent systems on the car.
We are looking for a talented Engineering Manager to lead, manage and grow the ML optimization engineering team. This team is responsible for optimizing the deep learning models for efficient inference when deployed to the AV. The team develops novel and state-of-art techniques like quantization, sparsity, Neural Architecture Search (NAS) and hyperparameter tuning to deliver inference efficiency through reduced latency, higher throughput and minimal memory footprint without sacrificing model accuracy.
At Cruise, we believe in managers who remain deeply technical and understand the challenges their teams are facing, even though they may not be the technical lead or contributing code day to day. Our managers coach their teams to success, shield their teams from distractions, and help publicly celebrate wins.
What you'll be doing:
- Define and lead the team’s technical vision and roadmap for DL model optimizations by working with technical leads, technical program managers and engineering managers in adjacent and cross-functional teams
- Seamlessly incorporate model optimization into existing model training and post-training phases of the Cruise AI workflow
- Collaborate closely with AV hardware to introduce hardware-specific model optimization techniques
- Drive strategy, evaluation and integration of vendors’ technologies that offer solutions in the model optimization domains
- Have a deep understanding of the technology, systems design, and technical details that enable the leader to question estimates, alternatives, risks, and tradeoffs
- Have a solid technical bar. Responsible for technical auditing to prevent poor design or coding choices.
- Experienced in the SDLC and various methodologies, as well as their implementation methods (Agile: Scrum/Kanban/etc.), and able to pick what fits their team best to maximize long term benefits for the company
- Effectively communicate upward and outward on team’s progress, call out risks early and collaboratively decide on design alternatives
- Work in a fast-paced environment to define engineering practices that lead to engineering excellence
- Hire the best talent for their team to raise the performance bar
- Empower their engineers by connecting them to mentors, customers, Staff or Principal engineers as needed
- Responsible for earning the customers’ trust, proactively communicating development status and risks to all stakeholders
- Expert in change control and change management to guide their teams and customers through changes with minimum disruption
What you must have:
- MS, or higher degree in CS/CE/EE, or equivalent, in industry experience
- 5+ years of software engineering experience in the field of machine learning and deep learning
- 3+ years experience in leading engineering teams or in a tech-lead role.
- Strong expertise with ML frameworks like Tensorflow, PyTorch etc.
- Proven track record of shipping production quality software for mission-critical or complex software products
- Self motivated and have passion to lead your teams, encourage best practices, and constantly grow your engineers towards their career goals
- Empathetic to different perspectives and work collaboratively in times of conflict
Bonus points!
- Experience with model optimization techniques like quantization, NAS, model compression etc.
- Experience working with ML hardware teams in informing architectural design for optimized model inference
- Experience in deploying inference solutions into real-world environments
- Experience working with AV software infrastructure
Why Cruise?
- Our benefits are here to support the whole you:
- Competitive salary and benefits
- 401(k) Cruise matching program
- Medical / dental / vision, AD+D and Life
- Flexible vacation and company paid holidays
- Healthy meals and snacks provided
- Paid parental leave & family expansion stipend
- Monthly wellness stipend
- Commuter benefits
- We’re Integrated
- Through our partnerships with General Motors and Honda, we are the only self-driving company with fully integrated manufacturing at scale.
- We’re Funded
- GM, Honda, SoftBank, and T. Rowe Price have invested billions in Cruise. Their backing for our technology demonstrates their confidence in our progress, team, and vision and makes us one of the leading autonomous vehicle organizations in the industry. Our deep resources greatly accelerate our operating speed.
- We’re Independent
- We have our own governance, board of directors, equity, and investors. Our independence allows us to not just work on the bleeding-edge of technology, but also define it.
- We’re Vested
- You won’t just own your work here, you’ll have the potential to own equity in Cruise, too. We are competing in a market that is projected to grow exponentially, which gives our company valuation room to grow.
Cruise LLC is an equal opportunity employer. All applicants for employment will be considered without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, genetics or any other legally protected basis. Below, you have the opportunity to share your preferred gender pronouns, gender, ethnicity, and veteran status with Cruise to help us identify areas of improvement in our hiring and recruitment processes. Completion of these questions is entirely voluntary. Any information you choose to provide will be kept confidential, and will not impact the hiring decision in any way.
We also consider for employment qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with applicable laws. And, if you believe that you will need any type of accommodation, please let us know.