Exterior Lighting Design & Release Engineer

About the role

We're ALTEN Technology USA, an engineering company helping clients bring groundbreaking ideas to life-from advancing space exploration and life-saving medical devices to building autonomous electric vehicles. With 3,000+ experts across North America, we partner with leading companies in aerospace, medical devices, robotics, automotive, commercial vehicles, EVs, rail, and more.

As part of the global ALTEN Group-57,000+ engineers in 30 countries-we deliver across the entire product development cycle, from consulting to full project outsourcing.

When you join ALTEN Technology USA, you'll collaborate on some of the world's toughest engineering challenges, supported by mentorship, career growth opportunities, and comprehensive benefits. We take pride in fostering a culture where employees feel valued, supported, and inspired to grow.

Location: Foster City, CA

We're seeking an experienced Exterior Lighting Design & Release Engineer to lead the design and development of advanced automotive lighting systems from concept through production.

In this role, you'll collaborate closely with design, manufacturing, suppliers, and cross-functional engineering teams to transform creative styling concepts into high-quality, production-ready lighting solutions that meet performance, regulatory, cost, and timing objectives.

The ideal candidate brings a strong background in automotive lamp development, expertise in optical and mechanical design, and a passion for solving complex engineering challenges while driving innovative products into production.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop exterior lighting solutions for various vehicles, translating aesthetic styling visions into feasible, production-ready designs from concept through production, ensuring performance, timing, and commercial requirements are achieved.
• Collaborate and communicate technical concepts and requirements effectively with Studio Designers, Suppliers, Manufacturing, and other cross-functional teams to achieve design themes, attribute targets, and resolve complex engineering issues.
• Leverage expertise in plastics, injection molding, optical design, GD&T principles, tolerance stack-up analysis, and electronics to solve complex technical problems and evaluate design trade-offs using first-principles reasoning and root-cause analysis, ensuring all parts and assemblies are optimized for high-volume manufacturing.
• Conduct high level root-cause analysis for any lighting system faults. Investigate system-level failures, often involving reviewing communication logs (CAN traces), module diagnostics, and correlating them with the functional model to find the source of the issue.
• Understand lighting system architecture
• Lead the development and creations of DFMEAs ensuring that dependencies are effectively cascaded to relevant cross-functional partners.
• Support product validation plans, validation activities and sign off results.
• Manage Tier 1 supplier relationships including RFQ documentation, technical design reviews, and the integration of supplier feedback.
• Manage engineering change management, maintain accurate Bill of Materials (BOM) using Enovia, and generate and manage 3D and 2D data with Catia V6.
• Align engineering deliverables with commercial program requirements including appearance, cost, weight, durability, legal requirements, and program timing objectives.

Qualifications

• Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering (Or related discipline, Masters degree preferred)
• 5+ years (preferred) of Exterior/interior Lamp development at a Tier 1 or OEM
• Experience in Lighting systems Engineering: communication logs (CAN traces).
• Capable of managing the full part lifecycle, including design, engineering validation, and release to production systems.
• Proficient in CATIA V5/V6, utilizing key modules like Part Design and Geometric Surface Design to generate 3D geometry, sectional data, and communicate technically sound design solutions.
• Strong understanding of engineering first principles and the ability to apply them to identify, analyze, and resolve technical challenges.
• Demonstrated ability to manage information, prioritize tasks, and communicate project status with clarity.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills, with the ability to clearly and concisely communicate with both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Strong working knowledge of FMVSS, ECE, NCAP and other automotive evaluation and regulatory achievement
• Ability to self-direct while managing ambiguity.
• Curiosity and high learning agility.

Salary Range

• $115,000-130,000
• The actual salary offered is dependent on various factors including, but not limited to, location, the candidate's combination of job-related knowledge, qualifications, skills, education, training, and experience

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