Automotive Programming Co Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

Job Summary:
Luminary is a Series B company headquartered in San Mateo, California, that helps engineering companies be more competitive through their Physics AI platform. As the Senior/Principal Lead Delivery Engineer for Automotive, you will own customer outcomes for engagements with various automotive clients, leading a cross-functional team to deliver innovative solutions.
Responsibilities:
• Own end-to-end customer outcomes across new and existing automotive accounts — from discovery and use case scoping through model development, deployment, and embedding into customer engineering workflows.
• Author Statements of Work (SOWs), educate customers on the engagement plan, and own delivery accountability against them.
• Lead a value delivery team in a matrix structure: Applications Engineers, Applied AI/ML Scientists, Data and Platform Engineers, and selected product engineers. Set technical direction, sequence the work, remove blockers.
• Operate as a dual hat — project manager and product manager — running sprints, milestones, and risk while also choosing the right use cases and shaping the product intuition for what to build next.
• Stay hands-on-keyboard where it matters. Debug a model, restructure a data pipeline, prototype a workflow integration. Lead from the front, not from slides.
• Embrace co-engineering: work side-by-side with customer engineers on use case development, sharing knowledge and building trust through visible, collaborative work.
• Partner with the GTM team on new account engagement, GTM-to-delivery handoff, and account growth.
• Bring market and customer signal back to Product and Research, directly shaping Luminary's roadmap for automotive use cases.
Qualifications:
Required:
• 5–10 years of experience in a technical role in a relevant industry (engineering, simulation, R&D, advanced engineering, technical program management, or applied AI/ML). Principal-level candidates have an extensive track record in automotive.
• Multi-physics fluency across automotive disciplines: structural mechanics, crash/safety, NVH, thermal management, battery systems, aerodynamics, electromagnetics, or multi-physics optimization. Generalist depth across several disciplines is more valuable here than world-class depth in one.
• Strong hands-on engineering chops — Python, scripting, simulation tools, and AI/ML workflows. Comfortable diving into code, models, or simulation setups when needed.
• Working knowledge of AI/ML applied to engineering — surrogate modeling, neural operators, physics-informed ML, or digital twins.
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional technical teams without direct authority. You influence through clarity, credibility, and outcomes.
• Product instinct: a track record of choosing the right problems to solve and shipping things that get used — not just demos that get cited.
• Customer-facing presence: equally credible explaining a physics model to a chief engineer and walking a customer roadmap with Luminary leadership.
• Self-starter mentality, comfortable with ambiguity, persistent through iteration. You question what you are asked to do and prioritize what actually moves the needle.
• Willing to travel 10–25% to customer sites.
Preferred:
• Advanced degree (MS or PhD) in Mechanical, Aerospace, Electrical Engineering, or related field.
• Prior experience at automotive OEMs (e.g., Tesla, Ford, GM, BMW, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Rivian, Lucid), Tier-1 suppliers (e.g., Bosch, Continental, ZF, Magna, Aptiv), or enterprise software companies serving automotive engineering.
• Familiarity with software-defined vehicle (SDV) architectures and how simulation/AI integrates into next-generation vehicle development.
• Track record of deploying ML or simulation tooling into production engineering workflows (not just research demos).
Company:
Luminary Travel designs bespoke high-end travel itineraries and private experiences for individual and corporate clients. Founded in 2013, the company is headquartered in New York, USA, with a team of 2-10 employees. The company is currently Early Stage.