Who’s hiring to help build self-driving cars
Companies nowhere near Detroit seek engineering talent
If you’ve got tech skills and are interested in self-driving cars, there’s a good chance you’ll wind up working in the Bay Area.
Where jobs in the automotive field were once exclusively tied to Detroit, the mushrooming importance of mobility software has seen employment opportunities migrate west as established automakers such as Ford Motor and Mercedes-Benz boost their ranks in Silicon Valley.
That shift is borne out by data provided to USA TODAY by Paysa, a site that uses machine learning to provide salary information and career success insights for both job seekers and businesses.
Over the past six months, dozens of companies looking for selfdriving car talent posted some 350 job listings, with 230 of those jobs based in either Mountain View or Palo Alto, Calif. Most positions fell under the broad heading of software engineer, though some were as specific as vehicle dynamics modeling engineer and reality capture processor.
Google, based in Mountain View, has one of the oldest autonomous car programs and topped the list with 52 job listings, followed by HERE (a Chicago-based autonomous-car-mapping company with offices in Berkeley, Calif.) with 36 jobs, and Robert Bosch (the German company’s U.S. headquarters is in Palo Alto) with 31.
Google’s hiring needs could well shift in time, given car project CEO John Krafcik’s announcement about a new 53,000-square-foot facility the company plans to open in the Detroit suburb of Novi.
The outpost will allow Google engineers to work more closely with a range of partners. Google currently has an agreement with Fiat Chrysler for the develop- ment of 100 Pacifica minivans that will be outfitted for testing purposes with self-driving tech.
Of note on the Paysa list was Uber, which has been making a huge push on the self-driving car front. It listed just nine jobs over the past six months. The ridehailing giant recently began picking up passengers in its self-driving Ford Fusions in Pittsburgh, home to its new research facility. A surprising fourth with 24 job postings was lesser-known Zoox, a Silicon Valley start-up that hopes to rival Tesla. In June, Zoox raised $200 million in Series A funding at a valuation of $1 billion.
Noticeably absent: Apple.