Operations Associate, Labs

About the Team

DoorDash Labs is an independent team within DoorDash. We explore robotics and automation to transform last-mile logistics in the long term. If you have a passion for applying robotics solutions in a service used by millions of people, then we want to talk to you!

About the Role

The Operations Associate will serve as the primary liaison between public road operators, engineers, and mapping specialists, ensuring efficient communication and coordination. This role will oversee the mapping process, from curation to validation, by establishing streamlined workflows, maintaining high standards of accuracy, and driving continuous improvement. Additionally, the role involves advocating for tooling improvements, enhancing cross-team collaboration, and supporting the hiring and development of a high-performing team of mapping specialists to drive efficiency and accuracy in the mapping pipeline. This role will also have ownership for maintenance of released maps, ensuring that ongoing operations is supported with scalable and sustainable workflows for map related changes and issues.

Job Responsibilities:

• Manage the release, validation, and maintenance of all semantic maps and feature branches, ensuring they remain current with ODDs, robot version updates and curation features.
• Act as a key liaison between public road operators), engineers, map curators, operations managers and stakeholders to ensure seamless communication and alignment of objectives.
• Support mapping specialists in meeting expansion goals and deadlines while ensuring that mapping outputs maintain a high standard of detail/accuracy and prioritizes safety for the fleet.
• Establish and formalize processes for all stages of the mapping pipeline, including Curation, QA, Map Maintenance, and Validation, to improve efficiency, standardization, and provide clear structure for Mapping Specialists to follow.
• Establish and implement a feedback loop between public road operators and Mapping Specialiststo enhance visibility and understanding of mapping issues, while equipping specialists with the tools and resources to independently address and resolve these issues.
• Facilitate collaboration between public road operators and Mapping Specialists by providing operators with insights into the mapping pipeline, outlining the challenges faced by curators, and guiding them on how to structure feedback to effectively support curators in addressing mapping issues.
• Oversee and formalize the mapping ODD expansion process and documentation by collaborating with stakeholders and ensuring that skilled operators are tasked to test experimental scenarios before releasing new maps fleetwide.
• Collaborate closely with engineers to design and develop test maps for evaluating new experimental behaviors and software changes to be run in simulations and before facilitating on-road testing/deployment.
• Advocate for tooling enhancements by working closely with engineers to identify and communicate mapping tooling needs to improve mapping efficiency, reduce curation errors, and increase overall output. Additionally, ensure that mapping specialists are up to date on curation policies, software changes and training on new tooling additions.
• Collaborate with operation managers, engineers and stakeholders to allocate robot and staffing resources for daily deployment, mapping validation and other experimental tests.
• Oversee the hiring, training, and development of top-tier Mapping Specialists and supporting their growth within Operations.

• 5+ years of experience in a cross-functional, product-based environment, in autonomous or robotics operations management.
• Proven ability to problem-solve, enhance operational efficiency, and implement process improvements with a proactive and resourceful mindset.
• Strong leadership skills with experience mentoring and guiding teams, while promoting a teamwork mentality.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, capable of collaborating with internal leads and external stakeholders, and clearly explaining technical issues.
• Strongly committed to fostering a robust culture of safety; focusing on the implementation of safe and efficient practices in daily operations, and engaging with professional safety stakeholders.
• Skilled in Jira, Slack, Google Workspace, Linux, GitHub, Sigma, and other relevant tools.
• Highly adaptable and thrives in a fast-paced startup environment, effortlessly handling fluctuating and non-traditional schedules while aligning strategies to company goals and operational excellence.

• For salaried roles: flexible paid time off/vacation, plus 80 hours of paid sick time per year.
• For hourly roles: vacation accrued at about 1 hour for every 25.97 hours worked (e.g. about 6.7 hours/month if working 40 hours/week; about 3.4 hours/month if working 20 hours/week), and paid sick time accrued at 1 hour for every 30 hours worked (e.g. about 5.8 hours/month if working 40 hours/week; about 2.9 hours/month if working 20 hours/week).