Fleet Support Engineer

Overview

Aquent has partnered with a pioneering leader in the autonomous vehicle industry to find a talented engineer who will play a vital role in shaping the future of self-driving mobility. In this high-impact position, you will be at the heart of daily fleet operations, ensuring the absolute reliability and uptime of safety-critical electronic control units (ECUs) that govern vehicle motion and execute life-saving backup maneuvers. By diagnosing complex hardware-to-software communication paths and implementing permanent corrective actions, your technical expertise will directly safeguard passengers and keep a cutting-edge autonomous fleet running smoothly and safely every single day.

The Opportunity

As a key member of the engineering support team, you will collaborate across multi-functional groups to solve sophisticated technical challenges. You will dive deep into real-time vehicle diagnostics, analyze telemetry data to proactively prevent system failures, and develop comprehensive guides that empower field technicians. This role offers an incredible opportunity to work with state-of-the-art redundant control architectures and make a tangible, daily impact on the evolution of autonomous transportation.

Key Responsibilities

• Serve as the primary technical point of contact for real-time escalations involving primary and backup motion-control units, addressing controller faults, communication dropouts, and failed resets.
• Conduct in-depth root cause analysis to implement both immediate workarounds and permanent corrective actions for motion-control and safety-controller anomalies.
• Diagnose and resolve complex issues across dual-processor architectures (compute and monitor processors) and backup takeover paths, ensuring seamless fail-operational performance and safe-stop execution.
• Troubleshoot network and gateway faults within the motion-control domain, including CAN, CAN-to-Ethernet gateway communications, and bus error conditions.
• Analyze command and feedback paths between primary compute units, motion-control units, and downstream ECUs such as body, thermal, powertrain, and chassis controllers.
• Validate and perform component-level and vehicle-level bring-up and functional verification procedures, including firmware alignment following hardware replacements.
• Develop and maintain comprehensive troubleshooting documentation to streamline field operations and drive knowledge sharing across teams.
• Analyze large datasets and fleet telemetry to identify systematic issues and recommend preventative engineering actions.
• Maintain flexibility to support operational needs, including availability for night and weekend shifts (with advanced notice) and occasional travel to operational sites.

What You Bring (Required Qualifications)

• At least 4 years of relevant experience in transportation, aerospace, or autonomous systems, with a strong focus on embedded vehicle controllers, motion control, or safety-critical ECUs.
• A Bachelor’s degree in Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Computer Engineering, or Mechanical Engineering.
• Hands-on experience working with embedded ECUs, real-time control systems, microcontroller-based architectures, and state machines.
• A solid understanding of fail-safe/fail-operational architectures and redundant control strategies in safety-critical environments.
• Proficiency in interpreting electrical schematics, wiring harness diagrams, and state machine diagrams.
• Experience debugging Unified Diagnostic Services (UDS) issues.
• Extensive experience with CAN architecture and frame-level troubleshooting using industry-standard tools such as Vector CANalyzer, CANoe, or PCAN.
• A holistic, proactive problem-solving mindset with the ability to trace high-level system behaviors down to component-level details.
• Excellent communication and relationship-building skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively in fast-paced, real-time operational environments.
• Ability to pass a background check and Motor Vehicle Record (MVR) check.

Preferred Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience specifically focused on firmware validation for embedded systems.
• Experience with Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) and Software-in-the-Loop (SIL) firmware validation methodologies and test plan development.
• Familiarity with automotive network gateways, including CAN-to-Ethernet (DoIP) communication.
• Strong understanding of embedded controls (such as controller takeover/arbitration logic) and interfacing with physical sensors and actuators.
• Experience providing remote technical support for vehicle troubleshooting.
• Proficiency with Linux and Python-based programming for fleet-level data processing and analysis.