Staff Software Engineer, Motion Planning

Description

The team is hiring a staff software engineer to build and improve behavior planning and motion planning for autonomous driving systems.

You will take planning features through their full life cycle, covering design, implementation, validation, deployment and post-release analysis.

The work centers on real autonomous driving behavior, with the aim of making decisions that are safe, smooth and effective in complicated traffic.

The role suits someone with substantial planning experience who likes shipping production-grade autonomy software and working across the wider autonomy stack.

Responsibilities

• Design, build and refine motion planning features.
• Take planning projects from problem definition through to deployment.
• Investigate autonomy behavior using logs, simulation runs, metrics and real-world data.
• Tune how the system weighs safety, passenger comfort, forward progress and operational limits against each other.
• Work with the Prediction, Controls, Perception, ML, Simulation, Systems and Safety teams.
• Set success metrics and validation plans for planning features.
• Write production-quality C++.
• Take part in technical design reviews, code reviews and architecture discussions.
• Lead and mentor junior and senior engineers.

Requirements

• Leadership experience, ideally including managing direct reports, combined with a hands-on approach that sets the example for the team.
• Experience in behavior planning, motion planning, decision-making, robotics, autonomous vehicles or a closely related area.
• Strong software engineering skills, preferably in C++. Hands-on coding remains part of the job.
• Experience building autonomy software in industrial, production or near-production settings.
• Ability to diagnose complex robotics or autonomy behavior using logs, metrics and simulation.
• Sound system-level judgment on safety, comfort and readiness for deployment.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills.

Conditions

The office is in central Mountain View, CA.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation, including equity and annual bonuses.
• Medical, dental and vision plans through Kaiser Permanente, Cigna and MetLife, including a medical plan with infertility coverage.
• MetLife legal services, identity and fraud protection, hospital indemnity insurance, accident insurance and critical illness insurance.
• Flexible PTO, 10 paid holidays and generous parental leave.
• Long-term disability, short-term disability and life insurance.
• Wellbeing benefits: Headspace and Spring Health through Cigna, Calm and Rula through Kaiser and Rula, One Medical, Gympass.
• Fidelity 401(k).
• Commuter benefits, an FSA, a dependent care FSA and an HSA.
• Incentive programs, including referral and patent bonuses.
• Office perks: dog-friendly office, free catered lunch, a fully stocked kitchen and free EV charging.