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Bad software crashed Boeings. Now it appears the company lacked a singular software supremo

Former SpaceX, Tesla, and Google site reliability leader steps into newly-created role

Boeing has created a new role for a vice president of software engineering and filled it with a veteran of similar gigs at SpaceX, Tesla, and Google.

The Register reports the new job because Boeing’s appointment announcement points out that it previously lacked such a role – and also because the company has admitted that software faults and its failure to address them led to the deaths of 346 people who flew on the 737 Max.

The aerospace outfit says the new role “will focus on further strengthening Boeing's focus on software engineering across the enterprise.”

Who was brave enough to step into this gig? Meet Jinna Dylan Hossein, whose previous roles include veep of software engineering at SpaceX, interim veep of autopilot software at Tesla and director of software engineering at Google.

'Software delivered to Boeing' now blamed for 737 Max warning fiasco

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Hossein’s LinkedIn profile says he was a founding member of Google’s famed site reliability engineering team and led teams working on Google cloud. At SpaceX he worked on 40 Falcon and 10 Dragon launches and says he was involved in the first successful orbital class booster landing among other feats.

His last gig was at self-driving car company Aurora.

Boeing has big plans for Hossein, announcing that he “will lead a new, centralized organization of engineers who currently support the development and delivery of software embedded in Boeing's products and services. The team will also integrate other functional teams to ensure engineering excellence throughout the product life cycle.”

“Jinnah will be charged with defining and leading Boeing's strategy for software engineering, which includes providing capabilities, technologies, processes and secure and accurate systems to meet the needs of all our customers across the entire product life cycle," said Greg Hyslop, Boeing chief engineer and senior vice president of engineering, test & technology, who added that Hossein will “focus on further strengthening Boeing's focus on software engineering across the enterprise.”

Hossein will report to Hyslop. ®

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