Full-Time
Senior Manager
Autonomous Vehicle Assembly Operations
Updated on 8/19/2026
Outrider
51-200 employees
Automates yard operations with electric trucks
Compensation Overview
$155k - $215k/yr
Henderson, CO, USA
In Person
Travel is required as needed; the majority of work is based at the Colorado headquarters.
Bachelor's, Master's
 Operations & Logistics (1) |
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- A bachelor's degree or higher in Engineering, Manufacturing, Industrial Engineering, Operations Research, or a related technical discipline.
- At least 7 years of progressive experience in assembly, production, manufacturing engineering, or advanced manufacturing of vehicles, complex hardware, or electromechanical systems, including at least 3 years leading manufacturing or technician teams.
- Demonstrated success taking an assembly or manufacturing operation from concept or low-volume production through commercial scale.
- Experience in automotive, commercial vehicles, electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, robotics, aerospace, industrial automation, or similarly complex hardware.
- Strong knowledge of mechanical and electrical assembly, vehicle wiring and harnesses, sensors, compute hardware, and integrated electromechanical systems.
- Deep knowledge of assembly process design, line balancing, manufacturing layout, tooling, material flow, capacity planning, and production optimization.
- Experience establishing standard work, process qualifications, inspection processes, manufacturing control plans, and production documentation.
- Experience building or upfitting autonomous, electric, commercial, or other highly complex vehicles, including integrating LiDAR, radar, cameras, GNSS, compute/networking hardware, robotics, or other vehicle sensing and control systems.
- Experience with ERP/MRP production processes, including work orders, routings, work-in-process, inventory, material planning, and production control using systems such as NetSuite, SAP, or equivalent.
- Experience implementing or operating manufacturing execution systems and manufacturing quality data systems.
- Experience implementing and sustaining ISO 9001-compliant manufacturing and quality processes, including participation in a successful certification or recertification audit.
- Demonstrated ability to recruit, lead, coach, and develop high-performing technician and production teams.
- Ability to work hands-on in a fast-moving production environment characterized by frequent change, urgency, and evolving requirements.
- Ability to travel as needed.
- Own the end-to-end conversion of base electric trucks into fully integrated Outrider autonomous vehicles.
- Develop and execute the assembly roadmap for scaling from low-volume builds to efficient, repeatable, high-quality commercial production.
- Lead daily assembly operations and a team of vehicle assembly and integration technicians to achieve safety, quality, schedule, and cost objectives.
- Design and optimize process flow, line layout, workstations, tooling, material presentation, staffing, capacity, and manufacturing footprint.
- Establish standard work, technician instructions, training and qualification programs, inspection criteria, production controls, and build documentation.
- Develop internal-versus-external manufacturing strategies and establish scalable processes with original equipment manufacturer and contract manufacturing partners.
- Work with commercial, engineering, and operations teams on production planning and cost efficiency.
- Oversee Outrider facilities.
- Manage and drive key performance indicators for safety, quality, delivery, cost, throughput, first-pass yield, rework, cycle time, work-in-process, and labor efficiency.
- Build quality into each stage of assembly through process controls, qualifications, measurement systems, in-process inspection, and end-of-line acceptance.
- Apply root-cause analysis, statistical process control, failure-mode risk analysis, 5S, Value Stream Mapping, Gauge R&R, APQP, and other lean and quality tools.
- Partner with Engineering and Test to develop component, subassembly, and final-vehicle test processes, including failure analysis, repair, retest, and vehicle release.
- Drive continuous improvement in vehicle quality, reliability, throughput, labor efficiency, build time, footprint, and manufacturing cost.
- Deploy manufacturing execution systems and manufacturing data systems supporting digital work instructions, work orders, routing, work-in-process, traceability, quality records, and production reporting.
- Partner with Supply Chain, Finance, and IT to implement and improve ERP/MRP, inventory management, material planning, and production-control processes.
- Maintain accurate vehicle configuration, build, inspection, test, and non-conformance records.
- Partner with Engineering on design for manufacturing, design for assembly, design for test, new product introduction, engineering changes, production readiness, tooling, fixtures, error-proofing, and automation.
- Ensure parts, kits, tools, and consumables support production requirements.
- Develop manufacturing processes and documentation that can be transferred to external manufacturing partners as Outrider scales.
- Manage assembly-related vehicle repairs and modifications using appropriate cross-functional resources.
- A master's degree in Engineering, Manufacturing, Operations, or a related discipline.
- Experience managing original equipment manufacturers, contract manufacturers, or outsourced manufacturing and transferring processes from pilot to external production.
- Experience in supply chain management and vendor negotiation.
- Experience in facilities management.
- Experience implementing ISO 9001-compliant processes from the ground up through successful certification.
- Experience with manufacturing test automation, digital work instructions, genealogy and traceability systems, and production test platforms.
- ASQ, CMfgE, CPIM, Lean, Six Sigma, or similar manufacturing, quality, or supply-chain certification.
- Strong cross-functional leadership, communication, organizational, and problem-solving skills.
Outrider automates yard operations at logistics hubs with an integrated system of software, robotics, and electric yard trucks to handle tasks like moving trailers and managing yard traffic. The product coordinates these tasks using sensors and control software to replace manual work, increasing efficiency, reducing turn times, and improving asset tracking and space utilization while lowering emissions. It differentiates itself by offering a full stack solution—hardware, software, and ongoing support—tailored to yard automation and sustainability, not just components. The goal is to help hubs operate faster and more safely while reducing carbon footprint and making space usage more efficient.
Company Size
51-200
Company Stage
Series D
Total Funding
$306M
Headquarters
Golden, Colorado
Founded
2017
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- November 19, 2025 support services improved uptime for driverless yard operations.
- Outrider said customers represent over 20% of North American yard trucks in 2026.
- July 2026 product updates position Outrider for broader distribution-center rollouts this year.
What critics are saying
- October 24, 2024’s $62 million Series D still leaves heavy capital dependence.
- Commercial rollout in 2026 concentrates risk on a few Fortune 500 yard operations.
- Any safety incident in mixed-traffic yards would freeze deployments and cripple trust.
What makes Outrider unique
- Outrider’s 2026 system combines electric yard trucks, autonomy, and enterprise support services.
- Its January 2025 reinforcement learning deployment sped path planning 10x across customer sites.
- By July 2026, Outrider claimed over 200,000 safety scenarios and TÜV SÜD review.
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Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
↓ -11%1 year growth
↓ -11%2 year growth
↓ -11%The yard dog, the diminutive cousin of the Class 8 tractor, is getting an autonomous AI-powered upgrade courtesy of Outrider.Outrider, an autonomous yard operations leader, recently announced an industry-first deployment of advanced reinforcement learning (RL) techniques across its customer sites. FreightWaves spoke with Andrew Smith, founder and CEO of Outrider about what the release means for the startup and how it’s taking the humble yard dog to new heights.For those outside the supply chain, yard operations can consist of drayage operations at ports, intermodal operations at railheads, or in the yards from distribution centers to trucking terminals. The humble yard dog is used to shuttle empty and loaded trailers to and from docks to parking places, where the larger Class 8 tractor hauls the goods for longer distances.Outrider noted in the release that incorporating the RL techniques increased path planning speed by 10x and enabled the Outrider System the ability to move freight more efficiently and safely through crowded, chaotic and busy distribution yards. Smith adds that right now their network represents about 20% of all yard trucks operating in North America with many customers invented in pilot operations since the early days of the company back in 2017.How the reinforcement learning worksRL is part of the successful application of AI in the physical world, where the AI collects a large dataset that is then used to train the AI. For the yard dog, Smith notes the 5 years’ worth of data collected from their autonomous yard trucks is the primary source to train the system. Outrider boasts over 200,000 safety scenarios while third-party safety experts and its Fortune 500 customers validate the safety cases.With that training data, the next step is to reinforce positive behaviors and interactions
Kodiak Robotics strikes first in the driverless truck commercialization race(Photo: Kodiak Robotics)The Permian Basin, known for its huge deposits of oil and natural gas, now boasts the first successful customer launch for driverless truck delivery operations On Friday Kodiak Robotics and Atlas Energy Solutions announced that Atlas completed the delivery of 100 loads of proppant with two RoboTrucks equipped with Kodiak Driver, Kodiak’s self-driving system. The RoboTrucks are part of Atlas’s launching of the Dune Express, a 42-mile autonomous conveyor belt in the desert that transports sand from Kermit, TX to a facility in eastern New Mexico. The Atlas autonomous RoboTrucks then transport frac sand to customers across the Delaware Basin. This is part of a larger effort by Atlas to automate its entire supply chain. Kodiak Robotics’ initial driverless operations with Atlas, announced last July, involved Kodiak making deliveries with Kodiak-owned trucks. The release notes Atlas is now able to complete its own driverless deliveries across the 75,000 square mile Permian Basin in West Texas and Eastern New MexicoDon Burnette, Founder and CEO at Kodiak said in the release, “this is an incredible moment, for us and for the autonomous trucking industry as we have officially delivered a commercial RoboTruck to a customer and launched commercial operations.”Atlas is expected to expand its RoboTruck operation over the course of this year with Kodiak announcing the opening of an 18,000 square foot facility in Odessa, Texas to help support the operations. Looking ahead, Kodiak looks to extend its safety case to highways for its long-haul customers.Electric vehicle startup Canoo files for bankruptcy, ceases operations(Photo: Canoo)The medium-duty electric vehicle space continues to get smaller. Seven-year-old electric vehicle startup Canoo has filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy and announced an immediate halt to operations. A press release noted the liquidation process is being overseen by a bankruptcy trustee in the Delaware Bankruptcy Court.Despite its partnerships with NASA, the Department of Defense, the U.S
The yard dog, the diminutive cousin of the Class 8 tractor, is getting an autonomous AI-powered upgrade courtesy of Outrider.Outrider, an autonomous yard operations leader, recently announced an industry-first deployment of advanced reinforcement learning (RL) techniques across its customer sites. FreightWaves spoke with Andrew Smith, founder and CEO of Outrider about what the release means for the startup and how it’s taking the humble yard dog to new heights.For those outside the supply chain, yard operations can consist of drayage operations at ports, intermodal operations at railheads, or in the yards from distribution centers to trucking terminals. The humble yard dog is used to shuttle empty and loaded trailers to and from docks to parking places, where the larger Class 8 tractor hauls the goods for longer distances.Outrider noted in the release that incorporating the RL techniques increased path planning speed by 10x and enabled the Outrider System the ability to move freight more efficiently and safely through crowded, chaotic and busy distribution yards. Smith adds that right now their network represents about 20% of all yard trucks operating in North America with many customers invented in pilot operations since the early days of the company back in 2017.How the reinforcement learning worksRL is part of the successful application of AI in the physical world, where the AI collects a large dataset that is then used to train the AI. For the yard dog, Smith notes the 5 years’ worth of data collected from their autonomous yard trucks is the primary source to train the system. Outrider boasts over 200,000 safety scenarios while third-party safety experts and its Fortune 500 customers validate the safety cases.With that training data, the next step is to reinforce positive behaviors and interactions
Outrider is using reinforcement learning to enhance throughput at truck yards. Source: Outrider. Outrider Technologies Inc. today said it has deployed advanced reinforcement learning, or RL, techniques to maximize freight throughput at customer sites. The company said its RL models can increase path-planning speed by 10x and enable the Outrider System to move freight more efficiently and safely through busy, complex distribution yards. “Using the latest advances in AI, Outrider is continually decreasing the turn time of trailers moved autonomously in logistics yards,” said Vittorio Ziparo, chief technology officer and executive vice president of engineering
Despite their low-tech reputations, the industrial and agricultural sectors are being reimagined by autonomous solutions. The advent of autonomous commercial vehicles, as well as across warehouse operations, couldn’t be coming at a better time. Within agriculture alone, the American Farm Bureau Federation estimates there are around 2.4 million farm jobs that need to be filled annually. Separately, a skilled tradesmen shortage has left 88% of contractors struggling to find skilled labor. “Our agriculture, construction and commercial landscaping customers all have work that must get done at certain times of the day and year, yet there is not enough available and skilled labor to do the work,” said Jahmy Hindman, chief technology officer at John Deere, in a Monday (Jan. 6) statement announcing the debut of John Deere’s latest driverless machines