Senior Software Design Release Engineer

The Role:  

The Software Design Release Engineer represents an exciting and challenging leadership position related to the development and launch of embedded controller products. Is project management your strong suit? As a SW DRE you will be responsible for creating, communicating, and leading various types of ‘product’ plans and ensuring the on-time delivery of an embedded controller and/or its sub-components. The role requires a balanced mix of technical engineering skills and leadership skills, where you will have a high level of responsibility with limited formal authority, providing excellent opportunities for developing and honing the skill of influencing others! 

This role can be a good way to explore the transition from more technical roles to more managerial type skills and is perfect to develop the following competencies (ref. Career Development Website): 

• Project Management - Considers project goals, makes plans, identifies stakeholders, and marshals resources to meet project deadlines. 

• Informative Communication - Provides relevant information to individuals for decision-making purposes. 

• Persuasive Communication - Sells an idea or changes perspectives through oral or written communication. 

• Relationship Management - Develops and maintains constructive and cooperative working relationships with others. 

• Negotiations - Engages in a collaborative dialogue in order to reach an agreement that satisfies the joint interests of involved parties. 

• Delegation - Empowers others to take action and make decisions for both routine and important tasks. 

Experiences to be gained/practiced through this role include: 

• Management: Program and project management experience 

• Exposure: Experience working on cross-functional initiatives 

• Technical: Software, hardware, and calibration integration 

• Leadership: Experience leading diverse, global, and cross functional teams 

• Interpersonal: Change management 

What You’ll do:  

• Contribute ideas to a culture and organization that continues to try new ways of working, managing programs, and collaborating with product engineering and vehicle manufacturing. 

• Ensure that the product development and release plans are created and implemented in alignment to engineering standard work for the purpose of on-time high quality delivery of VMEC embedded control products. 

• Manage part number proliferation for the embedded controller (end model part number, software, and calibration parts) 

• Track and report status of work. Escalate issues as required and drive team effort to mitigate timing or quality risk. 

• Lead and support product issue investigations (Problem Resolution Tracking System – PRTS), continuous process improvements, standard methodologies, lessons learned, and quality improvement initiatives. 

• Support standard meetings related to specific responsibilities (e.g., Software Execution Team Meeting and agile meeting ceremonies) 

• Provide technical leadership ensuring issue resolution and appropriate technical direction for products of responsibility. 

• Train, coach, mentor other team members in areas of strong proficiency. 

Your Skills & Abilities (Required Qualifications)  

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Mathematics or a related technical degree 

• Minimum of 5 years of combined experience in at least three of the embedded controls development areas or equivalent such as: controller hardware design, sensor and actuator design, algorithm design, software development, calibration, integration, testing and validation, electrical architecture design, FMEA experience, HW or SW DRE, etc. 

• A solid foundation in at least a few of these skills: taking initiative, working towards results, solving problems, and analyzing issues particularly where the problems are unusual and sophisticated, dealing with ambiguity, planning and organizing including shown skills in project management, building relationships, collaboration and teamwork, critical thinking, experience leading meetings. 

• Proven Experience in Root Cause Analysis 

• Understanding of HIL Bench Testing 

What Will Give You A Competitive Edge (Preferred Skills)  

• Master’s degree in engineering or computer Science 

• 5+ years of automotive experience 

• Understanding of AUTOSAR software constructs and their implementation 

• Knowledge and experience with diagnostic parameter (DIDs, RIDs, DTCs) 

• Experience with Agile Product Development 

• Experiences with program and project management 

• Understanding of the Global Vehicle Development Process (GVDP) 

• Experience working on cross-functional initiatives 

• Understanding of the software, hardware, and calibration integration process 

• Experience leading diverse, global, and cross functional teams with a focus on change management 

• Familiarity with usage of Generative AI 

• Design Release and/or Calibration experience