Technical Account Director, Automotive

Job description

Parallel Domain's mission is to enable our partners to bring autonomy and physical AI to the world faster, safer, and with higher quality. We believe physical AI and autonomy have the power to create a safer and more productive world, and we are building the simulation infrastructure to make that future real. Our high-fidelity, fully controllable, software-in-the-loop sensor simulation products give the leaders in autonomous driving, drone delivery, eVTOL, robotics, and beyond the realism, accuracy, and confidence they need to test and validate their systems at scale. In autonomy and physical AI, there is no margin for error. ### The Role We are hiring a Technical Account Director to own highly strategic relationships with OEM customers with multiple entities in their corporate families. These are multi-year enterprise engagements with stakeholders across engineering, perception, planning, and executive leadership in both the US and Japan. The stakes are high and the accounts are growing. You will be the single point of contact for this account. You own the relationship, the program, and the commercial expansion. You run the cadence, you build the org map, and you drive alignment across every active workstream. Engineers, FDEs, product, and executives all plug into the account through you. This is a technical role. You will sit in rooms with perception leads, simulation engineers, and ML infrastructure architects and you need to hold your own. You need to understand the sim-to-real gap, how sensor simulation works, what makes a replica production-grade, and where the hard tradeoffs live in customer integration. You do not need to write code. You do need to anticipate where a technical approach might hit a wall and proactively recommend a better path. You also need to know when to pull in our FDEs and engineers for hands-on product depth. ### What you will do - Own the account end to end: relationship, technical guidance, commercial, escalations, expansion, and renewal. - Be the single point of contact for every inbound and outbound communication with the customer. Set and hold internal SLAs on response times. - Guide the customer's technical approach to integration, simulation usage, and replica adoption. Spot risks early and proactively recommend the path that gets them to production faster. - Program manage 5 to 8 concurrent workstreams across PD and customer teams, driving alignment on status, progress, blockers, and decisions between both sides. - Build and maintain a deep org map across the customer's corporate family: decision makers, champions, blockers, budget holders, and how the entities connect to each other. - Run the customer cadence: weekly tactical syncs with the working team, monthly steering with leadership, quarterly executive business reviews with our exec team. - Drive multi-year account planning, expansion into new teams and use cases, and pricing conversations. - Coordinate internal PD resources (FDEs, engineering, product, finance, legal) so the customer sees one face and gets one answer. - Partner with our executive sponsors on the most senior customer relationships. ### What we are looking for - An engineering background. BS or MS in computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, robotics, or a related field. You started your career as an engineer and transitioned into customer-facing technical roles. - 8+ years of experience, with meaningful time owning complex enterprise technical accounts. Experience with global OEM customers is a strong plus. - Technical fluency in simulation, perception, sensor systems, ADAS tooling, ML infrastructure, or autonomous systems. You can discuss sim-to-real gap, lidar modeling, camera ISP pipelines, or HD map ontology without leaning on a teammate for every question. - Track record of managing multi-million dollar enterprise relationships at the depth this role requires. You have owned expansion, pricing, and strategic planning, not renewals alone. - Deep understanding of how large, matrixed organizations make decisions: org structure, procurement cycles, stakeholder dynamics, and the difference between a champion and a decision maker. - Program management instinct. You naturally track multiple concurrent workstreams, hold people to deadlines, and surface blockers before they become crises. - Strong commercial judgment: you drive contract structure, pricing, and expansion conversations. Relationship management is table stakes, not the ceiling. - Calm under pressure. This account has weight, visibility, and urgency. You absorb that and keep the team moving. - Fully remote. Must be willing to travel internationally, including Japan. ### Strong signals - 3 to 5 years as an IC engineer at an OEM, Tier 1, or AV company before moving into customer-facing roles. - Experience as a Technical Program Manager, Technical Account Director, or Customer Engineering Lead at a simulation, developer tools, or autonomous systems company. - Experience managing OEM relationships in automotive or trucking, especially with international stakeholders. - Familiarity with closed-loop simulation, scenario-based testing, or sensor-in-the-loop workflows.