Want to work on driverless cars? Well, you may want to think about Chicago.
Chicago has the second most self-driving car jobs in the US, only behind the Bay Area, according to USA Today, which was provided data from career site Paysa.
Over the last six months, companies have posted 350 self-driving car job listings in the US, two-thirds of which are in the Bay Area. Chicago came in second with 30 jobs, followed by Cambridge, Massachusetts with 27.
Chicago's driverless car jobs come from HERE, a mapping technology company with a large presence in Chicago. Previously owned by Nokia, HERE was sold last year to an auto group made up of Audi, BMW and Daimler for $2.8 billion. HERE has roughly 1,100 employees in Chicago, who make up about a fourth of the company's total number of workers (HERE is officially based in Berlin).
HERE's Global Head of Digital Transportation Infrastructure George Filley told Chicago Inno in April that the company was planning to add hundreds of new jobs in Chicago, adding that HERE will "...play a major role in terms of providing opportunities and developing core competencies around automated vehicles."
HERE's plan is to provide the mapping technology that powers autonomous vehicles. This year HERE unveiled HD Live Map, which the company called the "world’s most advanced cloud-based map asset commercially available for vehicles today." The mapping technology creates a more detailed representation of the road, allowing vehicles to essentially “see around corners” and operate beyond just the sensors on the car.
The biggest hirer of autonomous vehicle talent was Google, according to the USA Today report, with 52 jobs. HERE was second on the list with 36 jobs, followed by Robert Bosch with 31 and Silicon Valley startup Zoox with 24.
So what types of applicants are these self-driving car pioneers looking for? Of jobs requiring computer science skills, 61% required proficiency in programming language C++, and 56% required knowledge of Python. The top non-computer science skills were computer vision (48%), computer simulation (47%) and robotics (41%), according to USA Today.
The average salary for a driverless car gig was $138,000, with a signing bonus of $21,000 and a $26,000 annual bonus.
