Senior/Staff Software Engineer (Motion Planning)

• The Planning team is responsible for making sure PlusAI’s trucks make the right decision in every driving situation, safely, smoothly, and predictably for other road users, even when working with noisy, uncertain, or incomplete information about the world
• This is a cross-functional problem that requires close collaboration with Perception, Prediction, Controls, and Safety, and a willingness to work at the edge of research and production: bringing state-of-the-art decision-making and optimization techniques into a system that runs on real trucks, on real roads, today
• As a Senior Software Engineer on the Motion Planning team, you’ll research, develop, and implement planning technologies that let PlusAI’s trucks handle complex, real-world driving scenarios in a safe and human-like manner. You’ll work across the full decision-making stack, from reasoning about what the truck should do to determining precisely how it should get there, while accounting for the many ways a scenario could unfold
• Design and implement algorithms for decision-making and trajectory generation, ensuring safety, comfort, and reliability across a wide range of driving conditions
• Bring novel robotics and machine learning techniques from research into a production-grade, safety-critical system
• Reason about complex, socially-nuanced driving situations, such as negotiating merges, junctions, and interactions with other road users, under uncertainty
• Utilize modern C++ numerical optimization frameworks (e.g., CasADi, Acados) and industry-standard tooling (git, ROS, etc.) to integrate new planning algorithms into the production stack
• Partner closely with the ML and prediction teams to integrate, refine, and act on probabilistic and multi-future representations of how a scenario might evolve, shaping how these outputs are consumed by planning decisions
• Perform system-level diagnostics and tuning using in-house and open-source visualization tools (e.g., webviz)
• Collaborate cross-functionally and communicate clearly, producing system designs that are reviewed and approved at a high level before implementation begins

Benefits

• Unlimited PTO: Unlimited paid time off on top of company holidays to recharge and enjoy as needed
• Flexible working: Flexibile work arrangements and technology to help manage life’s demands at the office and remote
• Health benefits: Tiered options in medical, dental, and vision insurance to fit your unique needs
• Future building: Equity, 401k and FSA options for all eligible employees to help build for your future
• Professional development: Company-sponsored professional development opportunities such as conferences, training, and workshops
• Catered lunches: Daily catered lunches at both of our Santa Clara and Fremont offices- MS with 1-2 years of relevant experience, or PhD, in Computer Science, Robotics, or a related field
• Robotics expertise in one or more of: path planning, motion planning, trajectory generation, behavior planning, optimal control
• Strong oral and written communication skills, with the ability to collaborate across teams and derive solutions from cross-functional input
• Strong math (geometry, analysis, probability) and physics (kinematics, dynamics) fundamentals
• Experience designing, implementing, and refining planning algorithms on a real-world robotic or vehicle platform
• Strong production software development skills in C++; Python experience a plus
• PhD + 1-2 years or MS + 3-4 years of relevant experience
• Bonus: exposure to machine learning techniques such as deep learning, imitation learning, transformer-based models, or diffusion-based models, particularly as applied to decision-making or scenario generation
• Prior experience working on safety-critical systems
• Familiarity with safety frameworks for autonomy (e.g., RSS, collision avoidance/MRM logic)