San Francisco, May 26 (IANS): Former Tesla Autopilot software engineer CJ Moore, who left the electric vehicle company to join Apple's secretive car project last year, has now joined an Orlando, Florida-based lidar company Luminar, as vice president of software.

The company said that Moore will lead Luminar's global software development team, and will be instrumental in advancing Sentinel, Luminar's full-stack advanced safety and autonomous solution.

"With industry-defining technology and now nearly a dozen major commercial wins in hand, Luminar is ready for its next phase of leadership as we focus all-in on execution," Luminar Founder and CEO, Austin Russell, said in a statement.

"We are attracting the best leaders in the world in their fields to execute our vision and deliver on the future of transportation," Russell added.

CJ previously served as a director of development of Tesla's autopilot software with seven years at the company, and most recently as a director of autonomous systems at Apple. He brings an intense "build and ship" mentality and deep experience in embedded software and systems engineering to Luminar.

Meanwhile, the company has also appointed Rimjhim Dasgupta as chief of staff to EVP and GM and vice president of programme management.

Dasgupta brings extensive engineering programme management experience, leading teams from concept to production. Most recently, she served as a chief of staff in Intel's Emerging Growth and Incubation Group, including managing its silicon engineering team for lidar and radar.

Prior to that, she held senior operational and technical programme management roles at Synaptics, Apple and AMD.