In our Motion Planning team, you'll apply your passion for robotics and software development for production-ready autonomous vehicles. In this role, you'll perform groundbreaking research, conduct design processes, and implement performance-critical algorithms to generate safe, comfortable, and intuitive autonomous vehicle behaviors across Motional's fleet of robotaxis.

Technical Scope:

Develop state-of-the-art motion planning algorithms to ensure the vehicle autonomously navigates safely and smoothly.
Design and build robust and scalable software that enables rapid exploration and evaluation of different motion planning approaches and algorithms.
Collaborate with upstream decision/behavior planning, prediction, and downstream motion tracking algorithms.
Leverage modern development toolchains to enable rapid development cycles, including testing, simulation, and continuous integration.

Role responsibilities:

As a staff engineer, you will be expected to define and execute multi-quarter technical roadmaps and OKRs that span across multiple sub-systems and influence partner teams technical directions
Lead technical discussions and establish team-level processes for system-level design, review, and the implementation of advanced features and formulation improvements
Own system-level architecture for core products, driving org-wide incident response and severity reviews to proactively optimize on-road performance and overall system reliability.
Mentor junior and senior team members to cultivate a department-wide culture of product-focused engineering, robust documentation, and continuous technical learning.

What we're looking for:

5-7+ years of professional software development experience, preferably in C++.
Bachelor's required, Masters or PhD degree preferred in Robotics, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
Experience with algorithm development in motion planning, navigation, or any robotics or safety-critical systems.
Experience owning and leading technical development on features from problem formulation through algorithm design and implementation to delivery with impact.

Principal Software Engineer, Motion Planning