Melissa Nowakowski is currently the head of market application engineering for the autonomous mobility business in the Americas at Continental Automotive Systems.
She has been holding this position since 2022. Continental Automotive Systems is an automotive supplier that develops technologies and services for sustainable and connected mobility of people and goods.
In her current role, Melissa leads a team of 300 engineering members in the United States and Mexico to develop autonomous mobility products for North American customers.
Her team is working on designing nine products across radars, cameras, and advanced driver control units.
Melissa has worked in the auto industry for over 25 years, starting as a software engineer intern after college.
Throughout her career, she has transitioned through multiple engineering assignments, giving her a broad perspective. During her early years, she was awarded numerous patents.
After joining Continental in 2003 as a software engineer, Melissa stepped outside her comfort zone and led multiple engineering domains within autonomous mobility, including systems engineering, hardware, mechanical engineering, and algorithm engineering.
Before working in the automobile mobility business areas, Melissa led software teams in passive safety and powertrain engine systems.
She started her software engineering career as a student intern at Delphi Automotive.
Melissa rotated through different engineering assignments, including plant quality, manufacturing systems, hardware engineering, environmental testing, and software engineering.
Later, after hiring full-time at Delphi after graduation, Melissa led the software engineering team. She used her programming skills to create an instrument cluster where the driver could control the backlighting.
She was awarded two patents for this innovation, and Delphi was awarded the 2005 Ford Mustang instrument cluster. Melissa was also awarded a patent for another microcontroller and an algorithm.