HACKER Q&A
📣 culopatin

Feeling irrelevant in back end. How to pivot to automotive software?


I have a decade of mixed experience: 10+ years in IT, 2 years on a professional motorsports team (Tony Kart, Ducati, Miata), and 4 years in software (refactoring old .NET to Spring Boot/Angular and some greenfield projects). I self-taught my way into dev and finished a CS degree while working.

I’m currently at a {big_slow_corp} and feeling the AI squeeze trying to switch jobs. My exp is not public facing so the “experience building scalable apps to disrupt the market” requirement I think is my weakness. I’ve also realized my heart isn’t in web frameworks. I’m the guy bored on a plane talking to his gf about flap software, throttle response, and suspension geometry like a kid showing a toy to his mom.

I want to move "closer to the metal", ECUs, controlling machinery, I’d love ML applied to machinery, even infotainments!, but my professional resume is strictly high-level. My tinkering experience includes building MegaSquirts and using ESP32s for signal filtering and logic, data loggers and wiring things you’d find in a race car, but I currently lack a project car to demonstrate new work.

How can I bridge the gap from Java/Angular to automotive software?

Does a decade of IT and 4 in backend experience carry weight in the "Software Defined Vehicle" world, or am I starting at zero?

What "proof of work" can I build to wow recruiters at places like Toyota Research or Tesla (any brand with US presence really) without a physical car to hack on?

I'm ready to pivot to where my passion actually is. Any advice is appreciated.

  👤 nikhizzle Accepted Answer ✓
I would start playing with these - https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/solutions/autonomous-vehicles/a...

You don’t need to be an AI engineer if you don’t want to. There is a lot of work in deploying these models, managing them etc. See https://tangerinefeed.net/job/b6tx1/similar

👤 stockresearcher
I worked in automotive software a long time ago.

You’d be essentially starting at zero, but that’s ok. If you break in, you’ll probably need to move to a less glamorous area and accept lower pay. And you’ll always be lower than people with engineering degrees in the corporate prestige hierarchy. If you’re ok with that, go for it!

Check out ROS. No, it’s not what they use, but it’s free and available and absolutely gives you a good idea of the kinds of workflows you will see. When I worked in the industry, all physical hardware was plugged into massive simulation setups and run over and over and over again. Multiple hardware revisions, multiple software revisions. All before they would try putting it into an actual prototype vehicle. ROS lets you do all that - simulations plus interfacing with actual robotic equipment.

Good luck