Head of Systems Engineering

About the Work

• Own and scale Nuro’s Systems Engineering function across autonomy, hardware, safety case, requirements, validation, system performance, technical risk, and deployment readiness.
• Define the systems engineering strategy required to support Nuro’s next phase of growth across multiple cities, vehicle platforms, commercial partnerships, and future international markets.
• Translate product goals, safety goals, commercial use cases, and deployment milestones into system requirements, measurable performance targets, validation plans, and launch readiness frameworks.
• Own the requirements architecture, system decomposition, and interface management for the Nuro Driver across autonomy software, sensing, compute, vehicle software and hardware, and safety.
• Drive the system-level safety case in collaboration with Autonomy, Hardware, Legal, Product, and Operations, ensuring the safety argument is rigorous, evidence-based, and tied to commercial deployment milestones.
• Define the technical and validation framework for public-road operation, commercial launch, geographic expansion, platform expansion, and new use cases.
• Lead technical analyses and trade studies that inform architecture, sensing configuration, compute strategy, vehicle integration, safety mitigations, ODD expansion, and deployment readiness.
• Create mechanisms for risk identification, readiness reviews, requirements governance, launch decision-making, and cross-functional execution.
• Build, develop, and retain a high-caliber Systems Engineering organization.

About You

• 10+ years of systems engineering experience in a related field (e.g. automotive, aerospace, defense, robotics, medical devices, or another safety-critical domain), including 7+ years managing managers and scaling high-performing engineering organizations.
• Experience leading systems engineering or equivalent technical functions across complex hardware and software products, including ownership of safety-critical system development (safety case, hazard analysis, risk assessment, validation evidence, and deployment readiness).
• A track record of developing senior technical leaders, recruiting exceptional talent, and building teams that operate with high standards and high ownership.
• Excellent communication skills, able to make complex technical tradeoffs clear to engineering teams, executives, and cross-functional stakeholders.

Bonus Points

• Experience with modern autonomy stacks (perception, prediction, planning, localization, mapping, sensing, compute, vehicle integration) and the validation challenges specific to ML-based and end-to-end AI systems in real-world environments.
• Experience with vehicle platforms, embedded systems, automotive-grade hardware, compute systems, sensor integration, or hardware/software co-design.
• Experience building V&V strategies for public-road or regulated environments — spanning simulation, scenario-based testing, closed-course validation, operational readiness reviews, and launch decision frameworks.