Senior Staff Tech Lead Manager - Core Cloud Services

Who we are

Aurora’s mission is to deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly.

The Aurora Driver will create a new era in mobility and logistics, one that will bring a safer, more efficient, and more accessible future to everyone.

At Aurora, you will tackle massively complex problems alongside other passionate, intelligent individuals, growing as an expert while expanding your knowledge. For the latest news from Aurora, visit aurora.tech or follow us on LinkedIn.

We are searching for an exceptional Senior Staff Tech Lead Manager to join the Aurora Services Engineering team and take on a critical leadership role in building Aurora's suite of fleet management tools.

The Aurora Services Engineering team creates solutions—including backend services, web apps, mobile apps, and real-time onboard code—that enable commercial operation of autonomous vehicle fleets at scale. Our mission is to build the software that drives the commercial side of our platform, such as assigning work to autonomous vehicles, providing remote support, managing fleets, and ingesting orders from enterprise customers. As Aurora prepares to massively scale its fleet and integrate with major logistics partners on an API level, the tools we build are critical to the efficient, daily operation of our business.

As the Senior Staff Tech Lead Manager for the Core Cloud Services team, you will lead a team of 8–10 engineers to own the design, implementation, and operation of high-availability solutions for Autonomous Vehicle Fleet Management with some of the biggest companies in the trucking industry. In this role, you will lead as a "player-coach"—staying close to the technical details through designs, code reviews and at times hands-on coding while driving both incremental features and greenfield systems from the ground up. You will champion engineering excellence by ensuring our distributed cloud services achieve mission-critical reliability, while proactively guiding the team in adopting modern agentic coding workflows to accelerate developer velocity as AI tooling evolves.

In this role, you will

• Technical Ownership & Hands-On Contribution: Architect, design, and operate real-time and offline cloud backend services for fleet optimization, task assignment, and remote support. Maintain active technical engagement by participating in code reviews and writing production code as needed.

• High Reliability & Availability Engineering: Ensure all core cloud services are architected, deployed, and operated for maximum uptime, fault tolerance, resilient disaster recovery, and high availability (HA) to support mission-critical, continuous fleet operations.

• Modernization & AI Integration: Actively guide and upskill the team on adopting agentic coding tools and workflows as the AI development ecosystem continues to evolve.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Product Managers, UX Designers, Hardware/Autonomy teams, and external logistics/trucking partners.

• Execution & Excellence: Maintain high engineering standards, drive end-to-end execution, balance speed vs. technical debt, and ensure operational readiness across all services.

• People Leadership: Conduct 1:1s, career pathing, performance reviews, and foster a team culture grounded in empathy, ownership, and continuous learning.

Required Qualifications

• Education & Experience: BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science or a related technical field (or equivalent practical experience), with 10+ years of total software engineering experience, including 5+ years of direct engineering management experience leading teams of 5+ engineers.

• Cloud Architecture & High Availability: Deep technical expertise in cloud backend development, distributed systems, scalable web services, and modern API design. Demonstrated track record of architecting, building, and operating mission-critical services designed for high availability and scale.

• Hands-On Engineering Leadership: Proven experience as a "player-coach" who balances team management with technical contribution—regularly conducting thorough code reviews, writing production code for complex or high-impact architecture, and establishing high standards for engineering quality.

• Modern Tooling & Agentic AI Leadership: Track record of driving continuous engineering evolution by guiding and upskilling teams on adopting modern developer tooling and agentic coding workflows.

• Enterprise Delivery & API Integrations: Demonstrated experience delivering external, customer-facing software and production API integrations, including managing enterprise rollouts with real-world users.

• People Management & Mentorship: Proven capability to recruit, hire, manage, and mentor a team of 5–10 software engineers through regular 1:1s, performance management, technical guidance, and long-term career path development.

• Strategic Vision & Cross-Functional Partnership: Strong experience defining technical roadmaps and driving cross-team projects in close collaboration with Product Management, UI/UX Design, and domain stakeholders.

• Bias for Action & Execution: A strong preference for action and good technical judgment, with a demonstrated ability to balance shipping speed with architectural stability and operational sustainability.

Desirable Qualifications

• Experience in transportation, logistics, or other time-sensitive operations.

• Experience with safety and mission critical applications.

• Experience with fleet management solutions for Robots, Vehicles or Aerial Drones.

For roles based in Mountain View, CA: The salary range for this position is $212,000 - $340,000 per year.

Aurora’s pay ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Within the range, the successful candidate’s starting base pay will be determined based on factors including job-related skills, experience, qualifications, relevant education or training, and market conditions. These ranges may be modified in the future. The successful candidate will also be eligible for an annual bonus, equity compensation, and benefits.

Working at Aurora

At Aurora, we bring together extraordinarily talented and experienced people united by the strength of our values. We operate with integrity, set outrageous goals, and build a culture where we win together — all without any jerks.

We believe in-person work increases collaboration, empathy and our ability to lead effectively. As a result, we operate in a hybrid work environment where Aurorans are in office at least 3 days per week.

Our Careers page provides insight into what it is like to work at Aurora, and you can find all the latest updates in our Newsroom.

Our commitment to safety

At the core of everything we do is our commitment to safety. Building best-in-class self-driving technology will take time, and we believe that each employee at Aurora has a role in contributing to safety, every step of the way. Aurora expects commitment to our safety policies from every employee, and seeks candidates who take an active responsibility, can contribute to building an atmosphere of trust, and invest in the organization’s long-term success by prioritizing working safely, no matter what.

Our commitment to inclusion

Aurora considers candidates without regard to their race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy status, parent or caregiver status, ancestry, political affiliation, veteran and/or military status, physical or mental disability, or any other status protected by federal or state law. Aurora considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state, and local law. We are also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at [email protected].

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