Senior Motion Planning Engineer - Safety-Layer

Role overview Develop the safety layer that checks and adjusts autonomous vehicle motion plans so vehicles can meet safety requirements in ordinary driving and critical situations. The work spans algorithm design, software implementation, simulation, data analysis, and vehicle testing, with close coordination across the autonomy stack.

Responsibilities - Design, implement, and test methods for generating and selecting trajectories from asynchronous sources while meeting safety specifications. - Develop collision-avoidance maneuvers with control engineers, including maneuvers that use the vehicle’s available actuation safely. - Assess how perception sensor inputs can help identify safety-critical situations. - Build evaluation tools, choose test conditions, analyze results, and improve simulation models using real-world data. - Define safety, performance, and comfort measures; analyze fleet data to assess changes and find areas for improvement. - Investigate simulation, test-track, and public-road events from a motion-planning perspective, and travel for vehicle testing roughly once every four to six months.

Requirements - At least three years developing motion-planning or collision-avoidance algorithms in industry; autonomous vehicle experience is preferred. - Strong modern C++ skills, including C++17 or C++20, for reliable, high-performance software. - Working knowledge of trajectory planning, optimization or sampling methods, trajectory selection, prediction, collision detection, time-series processing, and data visualization. - Familiarity with dynamic collision models, convex sets, state machines, and decision-making across different update rates. - Comfortable working in Linux environments and with agent-based development tools. - A graduate degree in control theory, robotics, computer science, applied mathematics, or a related field is preferred.

Nice to have - Familiarity with machine learning, vehicle dynamics, SQL, Python, or common software build and version-control tools. - Research publications in robotics, controls, or autonomous driving.

Benefits and work setup The source lists a U.S. salary range of $172,000–$229,000. Eligible roles may also include bonus or equity and benefits such as medical, dental, vision, retirement matching, health savings accounts, life insurance, and pet insurance.