Self-Driving Car Employers

On Wednesday, Udacity announced the Self-Driving Car Nanodegree, about which I’m super-excited.

One of the first questions we got was, “Are there enough jobs to make this worthwhile? It’s just Google and Tesla, right?”

There are so many jobs!

Transportation-as-a-Service

Uber is building out their own autonomous vehicle division in Pittsburgh.

GM just announced that Lyft will be running GM’s first production run of self-driving cars.

Tech Companies

Google is the most famous tech company working on self-driving cars, but Baidu is working on this as well. Lots of rumors indicate Apple might be working on this.

OEMs

Every OEM has a team, or multiple teams, dedicated to self-driving cars. Tesla, Ford, GM, Toyota, Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Toyota, Mazda, Subaru, Kia, Volvo, and the list goes on.

Startups

Startups like Otto, Comma.ai, and Zoox are hiring as fast as they can.

Tier 1 Suppliers

Companies like Delphi, Bosch, and Continental are known as Tier 1 suppliers. They sell automotive-grade hardware in bulk to OEMs, and they badly want to win these contracts.

Tier 2 Suppliers

Tier 2 suppliers span a range of specialties, and typically sell their components to Tier 1 suppliers, who in turn package it up for OEMs.

This is a huge category!

In computer vision there is Mobileye, in mapping there is HERE, in processors there is NVIDIA and Intel, in lidar there is Velodyne. So many suppliers!

This is just a sample list of who is hiring. There are a lot more companies, and right now demand for talent is far outstripping supply. It is a great time to go to work on self-driving cars!