Natalie Afonina
Staff Technical Product Manager - Simulation
Greater Seattle Area United States
Summary
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Senior🎓
Top SchoolNatalie Afonina is a Staff Technical Product Manager specializing in simulation for safe autonomous driving, with 13 years of experience bridging research-grade autonomy and production-scale systems. She has led simulation, HD mapping, and automated test generation efforts at Cruise, Mapbox, Uber ATG, and Trustworthy AI (acquired by Waymo), focusing on adversarial testing and risk modeling to find realistic high-risk failures. Her background spans hands-on engineering and products—early roles at Tesla and NASA Ames—and advanced study in materials science, chemistry, and computer engineering, giving her a multidisciplinary lens on complex sensor and software stacks. Based in the Greater Seattle Area, she also represents outdoor brands as a professional ice-climbing athlete, reflecting a risk-aware, performance-driven approach that she brings to safety-critical autonomy.
13 years of coding experience
4 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor's Degree, Chemistry Major; Mathematics Minor, Bachelor's Degree, Chemistry Major; Mathematics Minor at Middlebury CollegeBachelor’s Degree, Computer Engineering, Bachelor’s Degree, Computer Engineering at Dartmouth CollegeMaster’s Degree, Materials Science, Master’s Degree, Materials Science at Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth
Russian, English, Spanish, c/c++, unix/bash, git, rosGithub contributions (5)
chickonice/CS50_Programs
Jan 2016 - Jun 2016
Contributions:75 pushes, 1 branch, 1 tag in 4 months
chickonice/Superalloy_Creep_Thesis
Feb 2016 - Dec 2016
Contributions:60 pushes, 1 branch in 10 months
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