Senior Manager/Director, Cartography

Location: Foster City, California, US; hybrid

Salary: USD 242,000–348,000 per year

Company

Zoox is building a fully autonomous, purpose-built robotaxi supported by high-definition maps for vehicle perception, prediction, and planning.

What you will do

• Lead and grow multiple cartography teams, including managers, senior cartographers, and contractor/vendor mapping teams.
• Own HD map creation, annotation, maintenance, and change detection for new operational design domains and city launches.
• Define map QA, validation standards, quality gates, and release processes with Safety and Autonomy.
• Set a prioritized roadmap balancing new-city expansion, map freshness, quality improvements, throughput, and cost.
• Manage vendor onboarding, training, capacity planning, SLAs, and quality audits.
• Partner with Mapping Software and ML teams on tooling, automation, metrics, and reporting for senior leadership.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in cartography, GIS, HD mapping, or a related geospatial field, including 3+ years managing managers and/or multiple teams.
• Deep understanding of HD map content, including lane geometry, topology, traffic controls, semantics, and annotation workflows.
• Experience running large-scale map production, maintenance, and QA programs.
• Proven experience managing distributed teams, including contractors or external vendors.
• Track record of defining processes, quality metrics, and operational rigor at scale.
• Strong cross-functional leadership and communication skills, including presenting to senior stakeholders.

Nice to have

• HD mapping experience in autonomous vehicles or robotics.
• Hands-on experience with GIS/geospatial tools such as QGIS or ArcGIS and map formats.
• Experience with ML-assisted map generation, automated change detection, or annotation automation.
• Background working in a safety-critical environment.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid work arrangement in Foster City, California.
• Cross-functional collaboration with Autonomy, Mapping Software, Safety, Operations, and ML teams.