Tesla Robotaxi backend director Thomas Dmytryk bids goodbye to the company after eleven years; writes 'why now' in a long LinkedIn post

Elon Musk’s Tesla has now bid farewell to Thomas Dmytryk, the director who played an important tole in building the company’s over-the-air (OTA) update system and the software infrastructure for its Robotaxi service. After more than a decade at Tesla, Tesla, Dmytryk announced his departure in a reflective LinkedIn post titled “Why Now”, citing family priorities as the reason for stepping away. In his LinkedIn post, Dmytryk wrote: “Human life’s always been my North Star, right now I need to be with mines.” He expressed gratitude for his Tesla journey, highlighting the abundance of opportunities and growth he experienced, but emphasized that personal commitments now take precedence.

Thomas Dmytryk’s contributions to Tesla

Dmytryk joined Tesla in 2015, when the automaker was delivering around 50,000 cars annually. Along with a small team of five engineers, he helped design and scale Tesla’s OTA pipeline, vehicle connectivity, and mobile app command layer. Under Dmytryk’s leadership these systems grew to support a global fleet of nearly 10 million vehicles, enabling Tesla to remotely deliver updates, bug fixes, and new features. More recently, he spearheaded the software backbone for Tesla’s Robotaxi ride-hailing service, which launched in Austin in 2025 and began unsupervised rides in early 2026.

Read Thomas Dmytryk’s complete LinkedIn post here

After 11 incredible years at Tesla, I'm closing the book. It’s been the ride of a lifetime: always on the news, innovating relentlessly, constantly pushing the limits. Tesla is THE place for talented, passionate people. I feel insanely lucky to have been part in that culture for so long.

But why stop? Why now?

When I joined, Tesla was a niche luxury automaker with only 50K cars delivered and lots of ambitions. My 5-person team owned OTA, connectivity, and commands running on a very simple stack. My ambitions at the time were simple: Automate everything. Pioneer software-defined vehicles. Modernize apps and infra. Expend our capabilities and delight users in the process. Year by year, successes fueled bigger dreams, broader scopes, tougher battles. Had few failures too but we always got back on our feet, quickly. The team grew and got better, better and better.

Then came our moonshot: create ride hailing capability and bring it to the world in a way that has never been seen before. Quickly we evolved from proof of concept to a full-blown production ready solution, bringing in more and more teams in the picture until we finally released it to the world.

Today, Tesla offers a ride hailing service powered by fully self-driving vehicles. It’s nearing 10M cars delivered. Best in class Charging network. Has one of the biggest battery business. Growing Solar division. Robots walking everywhere in HQ. Factories, service, operations worldwide. It’s a massive company and all these products are, in parts, powered by the technology that the team built. With AI applications running on top of it the possibilities are endless.

The future? Extremely bright. Ambitions intact, just getting started as a transformative company that could elevate billions of lives. So why leave now?! Human life’s always been my North Star, right now I need to be with mines.

I’ve always admired Tesla’s top leadership and vision. But what I’ve always found incredible is the tenacity, brilliance and devotion of people on the front line. YOU make Tesla unstoppable. I wish you all the best and of course EPIC wins.

To the people I've worked with daily over these years: It's been an honor to fight these battles alongside you. The camaraderie got us through the hardest times and will not be forgotten.

All Together we’ve made Tesla what it is today, and I’ll be cheering on the sidelines, for this world of abundance that lies ahead. Make it happen!! ��

A pattern of departures at Tesla

His exit adds to a growing list of senior leaders leaving Tesla in recent years. Notable departures include Drew Baglino, longtime powertrain chief, in 2024; David Lau, head of software, in 2025; and several program managers tied to the Model Y, Cybertruck, and Cybercab programs. The steady stream of exits has raised concerns about institutional knowledge loss at a time when Tesla is under pressure to scale its autonomous ride-hailing ambitions.