Autonomous Industry Hiring Amid Big Announcements

With Tesla’s announcement last week that all of its cars will have self-driving technology, at least one published report indicates that a strong job market is growing for engineers and developers entering into the nascent industry.

A recent USA Today article said that Bay Area jobs are growing in the autonomous vehicle industry.  The article said that the majority of the jobs will be located in Mountain View or Palo Alto, Calif.

“If you are an engineer who works with autonomous vehicles, you won’t have problems finding a job,” said Chris Urmson, formerly Google’s head of autonomous vehicle research, at an intelligent transportation systems trade show last year.

Most of the current jobs are offered by Google, according to Paysa, a salary information service.  Google has 52 openings; mapping service HERE, 36; and Germany-based Robert Bosch with 31.

Google recently announced it was establishing a 53,000-square-foot facility in Novi, Mich., in Detroit’s suburbs, to work on autonomous vehicle technology.  This would get them closer to automakers, according to the USA Today article.

Google already announced a deal with Fiat Chrysler to outfit 100 Pacifica minivans with autonomous vehicle technology for testing.

Noticeably absent from job hiring is Apple, which laid off dozens of workers developing self-driving vehicles, according to published reports.  While Apple never publicly admitted they were working on a vehicle, the company’s organization was called Project Titan.

Apple is said to be shifting strategy from actually building a vehicle to developing the underlying technology that goes into autonomous vehicles, according to a recent article in the New York Times.

While Tesla said it would outfit all of its electric cars with self-driving equipment, namely the Model, S, X, and the Model 3, it didn’t release any new employment numbers.  However, the USA Today story mentioned that Tesla competitor, Zoox, had 24 job postings.