Scaling the Software-Defined Vehicle Developer Workforce

As automotive manufacturers race to redefine themselves as software companies, it’s not just a race for the latest technology, it’s a race for the skilled workforce required to deliver SDVs at scale. [1]

Automotive manufacturers face a triple whammy in building out the SDV workforce:

1. The technology stacks are new and emergent, so it’s hard to recruit developers with existing expertise.
2. That means the “hardware-first” car industry needs to compete with “software-native” companies to hire the best talent.
3. Finally, these world-class software developers need to be turned into world-class automotive software developers.

A secret weapon for SDV developers

But it turns out there is a secret weapon at your disposal to broaden the range of people who can work with your technology stack, efficiently and productively. This is the magic of the SDK (software development kit). Creating or refining a good SDK is a multiplier that accelerates the progress of all your SDV projects, giving a head start, higher productivity, and consistent quality and coding standards across your software teams.

World-class software developers need to be turned into world-class automotive software developers.

At Concrete, we have helped define, design, and improve dozens of internal and open-source software development kits for specialist domains from machine learning to real-time networking to IoT sensor arrays. For example, we tested a kit for a major technology manufacturer and found, to our dismay, that over 90% of developers could not finish the getting started process. That’s a product failure with huge impact. After a single round of our research and design fixes, developer task success rates turned 90% failure into 90% success.

What happens with a good SDK

Let’s take an example to make things a little more concrete. OpenVINO [2] is an open-source toolkit that helps developers who aren’t AI specialists to get going with AI technologies like computer vision, large language models, and generative AI. It provides tools, an API, sample code, thorough documentation, and a rich getting started guide.

Creating or refining a good SDK is a multiplier that accelerates the progress of all your SDV projects.

Over 5 years of testing and optimizing the developer experience of the toolkit, we saw developers take OpenVINO resources and quickly develop applications that identified defects on a manufacturing line, correctly identify protected species vs. dangerous ones, help cars detect pedestrians, and make better diagnoses from x-rays. Each of these applications required a transfer of AI expertise into a very specialized domain. Rather than taking years to develop that crossover expertise and only then write applications from scratch, AI-na?ve developers became productive within days or less, thanks to what has become a well-designed SDK developer experience.

Turning generalists into specialists faster

Well-designed software-development kits (SDKs) built on great developer experience are a proven strategy to build that specialist capacity efficiently. Automotive companies that design and deploy the right kind of internal and open-source SDKs will be able to turn generalist developers into automotive software developers in a fraction of the time.

What's your take?

What are the biggest barriers you see to scaling the SDV workforce? What other ways are there to optimize how quickly software developers can become productive? What’s the biggest skill gap between software development generally and SDV development? Leave you answers down below in the comments.

This is the second article in a series. Click on the links below to read the other articles:

1. Optimizing Productivity in Software-Defined Vehicle Development
2. Scaling the Software-Defined Vehicle Developer Workforce
3. Accelerating the Impact of the Open Source SDV Ecosystem
4. Why Developer Experience is the next X-factor you need to master

[1] Forbes: Competition Grows in Auto Industry to Lure Laid Off Tech Workers

[2] OpenVino: Making Generative AI More Accessible

Concrete is the industry-leading human factors engineering consultancy specializing in software-defined everything (SDX) and developer experience (DevX). Contact us to deliver SDX at scale and elevate your success.