Chief Engineer Autonomous Trucking (m/f/d)

Join Quantum-Systems and bring autonomous trucks into real-world operations. As Chief Engineer Autonomous Trucking, you are the technical owner of the entire program and you identify yourself with the success of this product: you set the technical direction, shape the system architecture, and turn customer needs into an integrated, executable delivery plan. You orchestrate the complete system, from base vehicle and autonomy hardware to the autonomy software stack and full system integration, and you drive it to maturity, primarily for defense logistics applications in regulated environments. You work in an extremely tight partnership with Product Management: they own what the customer needs, you own how we achieve it technically and by when we deliver. Together you balance product ambition against engineering reality, make trade-offs consciously, and keep one integrated plan that the whole organization can execute against. This is a senior individual contributor role with maximum leverage: you align workstream leads, domain experts, truck OEM partners, and central functions into one integrated product and one executable delivery plan. You are the technical counterpart to Product, Sales, Supply Chain, Operations, external stakeholder (OEMs), and the credible engineering voice towards senior leadership. What is your Day to Day Mission: Own the Technical Program Own the end-to-end technical orchestration of our autonomous trucking program with strong focus on integration, execution readiness, and delivery reliability. Define and maintain the integrated technical roadmap: milestones, dependencies, and critical path from development through deployment, performance, and certification goals. Identify integration gaps, decision bottlenecks, and execution risks early; escalate with judg e ment and propose solution options Ensure technical trade-offs are transparent and made consciously across product, engineering, and operations. Drive System Integration to series industrialisation and production Align technical integration and ensure convergence across base vehicle, autonomy hardware stack, autonomy software stack (modular and End2End planner approaches), verification and validation, ground operations and test, and systems engineering including safety and security. Drive technical maturity from subsystem status to validated system behavior; ensure interfaces are clear, owned, and validated between the teams Push for integration planning with the right cadence of reviews, demos, test evidence, and decision points. Partner with Product Management Work in an extremely tight loop with Product Management: they own what the customer needs, you own how and by when we deliver it in lockstep alignment with engineering management. Translate product intent into technical execution clarity; challenge unclear scope, unclear priorities, or missing system implications early. Shape realistic sequencing between product ambition and engineering capacity. Build trusted, ey