Senior Program Manager, Training Development — Command Center — Aurora Innovation

Who we are

Aurora’s mission is to deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly.

The Aurora Driver will create a new era in mobility and logistics, one that will bring a safer, more efficient, and more accessible future to everyone.

At Aurora, you will tackle massively complex problems alongside other passionate, intelligent individuals, growing as an expert while expanding your knowledge. For the latest news from Aurora, visit aurora.tech or follow us on LinkedIn.

What we are looking for

Aurora hires talented people with diverse backgrounds who are ready to help build a transportation ecosystem that will make our roads safer, get crucial goods where they need to go, and make mobility more efficient and accessible for all.

We're searching for a Program Manager, Training Development: Command Center. Reporting directly to the Senior Director of Training, Learning & Culture, you'll own the full training portfolio for every Command Center role that keeps the Aurora Driver moving: Remote Assist Specialists, Mission Control Specialists, Dispatchers, and Command Center Leads. We're hiring because the Command Center population is scaling with the fleet, remote assist responsibilities are widening, and the Dispatcher role has no curriculum at all today. This is the seat that decides what "ready" means for the people overseeing autonomous trucks in live commercial operation, and then builds it, with two instructional developers already in place to help you ship and a direct line to the leader setting Aurora's operational readiness strategy.

In this role you will

• Own the Command Center training portfolio end to end (onboarding, refresher, remediation, and train-the-trainer) and run the qualification checkpoint that clears a person to work a Command Center position independently.
• Direct the work of instructional developers, setting the instructional design standard and the trainer-qualification bar consistently across sites, shifts, and employers.
• Keep curriculum anchored to a governing standard: every course cites the SOP it is built from, and every real change to an SOP, tool, alert, or threshold is reflected in the live course.
• Partner with Command Center leadership, Safety, and Product to translate autonomy-critical software changes and role redesigns into training before they reach the floor, and represent the human-performance view (cognitive load, vigilance, alert design) for remote monitoring roles.
• Report readiness: qualification status by role, time-to-competency, and coverage gaps into Aurora's weekly Ops Performance Review.

Required qualifications

• 6+ years in instructional design, curriculum development, or training program management, including 3+ years owning the full training portfolio for a safety-critical operational population or line of business.
• Demonstrated experience building qualification or certification programs from zero, where a person's completion gates their authorization to perform the work.
• Track record of building curriculum against controlled documentation (SOPs, work instructions, regulatory standards) and maintaining it through frequent change, with version control and audit-readiness.
• Experience directing the work of instructional developers or contractors, setting the design standard, reviewing output, and holding quality without direct reporting authority.
• Experience influencing manager- and director-level stakeholders outside your reporting line to adopt a standardized training or qualification practice.
• Working fluency with LMS administration and completion/compliance reporting (Workday Learning or equivalent), and with an established instructional design methodology (ADDIE, SAM, or similar).
• Demonstrated ability to operate where the standard is still being written, scoping curriculum for roles and technology that are actively changing, and re-sequencing as decisions land.

Desirable qualifications

• Experience designing training for remote monitoring, dispatch, control-room, or command-center roles: environments where the operator makes time-pressured decisions on information delivered through a screen.
• Background in an industry with regulated operational qualification: aviation (dispatch, ATC, flight ops), rail, maritime, utilities/grid operations, nuclear, emergency dispatch, or autonomous vehicle operations.
• Familiarity with human factors concepts (fatigue, workload, change saturation, alarm and alert design) and how they shape training design.
• Experience with Kirkpatrick Levels 3–4 evaluation, or otherwise tying training to downstream operational metrics rather than completion counts.
• Experience supporting multi-site or new-site launches against a fixed go-live date, including train-the-trainer hand-off packages.
• Experience training third-party or customer-employed staff to a standard your company is accountable for.

For roles based in Coppell, TX: The salary range for this position is $104,000.00 - $166,000.00 per hour.

Aurora’s pay ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Within the range, the successful candidate’s starting base pay will be determined based on factors including job-related skills, experience, qualifications, relevant education or training, and market conditions. These ranges may be modified in the future. The successful candidate will also be eligible for benefits.

Working at Aurora

At Aurora, we bring together extraordinarily talented and experienced people united by the strength of our values. We operate with integrity, set outrageous goals, and build a culture where we win together — all without any jerks.

We believe in-person work increases collaboration, empathy and our ability to lead effectively. As a result, we operate in a hybrid work environment where Aurorans are in office at least 3 days per week.

Our Careers page provides insight into what it is like to work at Aurora, and you can find all the latest updates in our Newsroom.

Our commitment to safety

At the core of everything we do is our commitment to safety. Building best-in-class self-driving technology will take time, and we believe that each employee at Aurora has a role in contributing to safety, every step of the way. Aurora expects commitment to our safety policies from every employee, and seeks candidates who take an active responsibility, can contribute to building an atmosphere of trust, and invest in the organization’s long-term success by prioritizing working safely, no matter what.

Our commitment to inclusion

Aurora considers candidates without regard to their race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy status, parent or caregiver status, ancestry, political affiliation, veteran and/or military status, physical or mental disability, or any other status protected by federal or state law. Aurora considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state, and local law. We are also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at [email protected].

For California applicants, information collected and processed as part of your application and any job applications you choose to submit is subject to Aurora’s California Employment Privacy Policy.