Autonomous Vehicle Safety & Government Affairs Technical Program Manager

Volkswagen AG

$120K — $145K *
Transportation
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5-7 years of experience in program management within safety or regulatory environment.
  • Strong knowledge of Safety Management System (SMS) and related safety disciplines.
  • Proven ability in stakeholder management and cross-functional coordination.
  • Excellent skills in risk tracking, issue resolution, and executive reporting.
  • Experience in governance processes and artifact management for safety programs.

Responsibilities

  • Establish and maintain an integrated Safety Office roadmap across multiple safety disciplines.
  • Coordinate planning and execution across Safety Office workstream owners.
  • Maintain visibility of program status, key risks, resource constraints, and executive reporting.
  • Serve as the central integration point for safety portfolio execution across various leadership roles.
  • Own program governance artifacts and facilitate governance forums and decision management processes.
  • Coordinate regulatory planning and execution with Government Affairs and manage internal audits.

Benefits

  • Opportunities for professional development and training.
  • Collaboration with a team of technical safety specialists.
  • Contributions to meaningful safety initiatives that impact organizational effectiveness.
  • Engagement in high-stakes, cross-functional projects with broad organizational exposure.
Full Job Description
Brief Role Description

The Program Manager for Safety Programs is responsible for establishing, maintaining, and executing the integrated Safety Office program roadmap across multiple safety disciplines, including the Safety Management System (SMS), Safety Assurance Case (SAC), incident response, quality management, VSSA, regulatory deliverables, audits, assessments, and related safety initiatives. This role serves as the central integration point across Safety Office functions, ensuring activities performed within SMS, safety assurance, incident management, quality management, regulatory compliance, and strategic safety initiatives remain aligned to organizational objectives, regulatory commitments, and program delivery milestones. The role owns program-level planning, governance, stakeholder management, dependency management, risk and issue tracking, executive reporting, and cross-functional coordination to ensure safety activities remain prioritized, visible, and delivered on schedule. While technical safety leaders remain accountable for their respective safety capabilities and technical decisions, the Program Manager provides the overarching portfolio coordination, prioritization support, execution oversight, and governance structure necessary to ensure successful delivery of the broader safety portfolio.

Role Responsibilities

Safety Office Portfolio Integration - 40%
  • Establish and maintain an integrated Safety Office roadmap spanning SMS, Safety Assurance Case development, incident response and corrective action programs, QMS activities, regulatory deliverables, audits, assessments, VSSA updates, and strategic safety initiatives.
  • Coordinate planning and execution across Safety Office workstream owners to ensure activities remain aligned, dependencies are managed, and conflicting priorities are proactively surfaced for decision.
  • Maintain consolidated visibility of program status, key risks, resource constraints, milestones, actions, and executive reporting across all safety workstreams.
  • Serve as the central integration point for safety portfolio execution across the SMS Lead, SAC Lead, Incident Response / Incident & Process Owner, QMS role, Principal Safety role, and related contributors.
  • Improve organizational effectiveness by allowing technical specialists and safety leaders to focus on technical decision-making, safety assessments, regulatory engagement, and subject matter leadership while program execution and tracking are managed centrally.

Safety Governance, Reporting & Controls - 30%
  • Own program governance artifacts, including integrated schedules, RAID logs, risk and issue registers, decision logs, action tracking systems, milestone plans, executive dashboards, and portfolio reporting mechanisms.
  • Facilitate governance forums, leadership reviews, management review preparation, action tracking reviews, and decision management processes supporting Safety Office execution.
  • Support regulatory planning and execution in partnership with Government Affairs by coordinating technical, safety, and regulatory workstreams, including VSSA updates, standards participation, and regulator-facing deliverables.
  • Coordinate Safety Assurance Case evidence planning, evidence collection dependencies, readiness reviews, and milestone tracking supporting internal and external safety commitments.
  • Support coordination of incident response governance, investigations, corrective actions, lessons learned programs, and associated closure tracking.
  • Coordinate internal audits, QMS assessments, corrective action programs, process improvement initiatives, and standards compliance activities.

Cross-Functional Program Execution - 20%
  • Drive cross-functional coordination between Safety, Engineering, Operations, Product, Quality, Legal, Government Affairs, and external stakeholders.
  • Manage complex safety programs and regulatory commitments across multiple concurrent workstreams and stakeholders.
  • Anticipate bottlenecks in roadmaps, stakeholder plans, and business goals; escalate risks and tradeoffs for timely decisi

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