Principal Motion Planning Engineer

On our Motion Planning team you'll provide leadership, perform research, and write scalable software that decides how our autonomous vehicles should move with safety, comfort, and intuition in mind. Specific domains to associate with our multiple motion planning teams include behavior, navigation, path, and route planning.  Model predictive control & trajectory optimization. Machine learning for motion planning.  You’ll have the ability to impact one or multiple teams.

What You'll Be Doing

• Perform research and build algorithms from design, prototyping, testing, deployment, to productization. 
• Integrate and evaluate combinations of motion planning and prediction algorithms
• Design and build robust and scalable codebase that enables rapid exploration and evaluation of different motion planning approaches and algorithms.
• Use software development expertise to teach others best software practices and principles.  
• Develop clean software for motion planning and decision-making modules that sit at the core of autonomous driving systems and interface with other key modules such as localization, control, perception, and prediction. 
• Be a lead member of the team providing mentorship and contributing to technical strategy, with or without direct reports.
• Guide and mentor team members to develop a culture of product focused engineering, research, and development.

What We're Looking For

• 8+ years research and development experience in robotics / motion planning
• 8+ years C++ software development
• Past experience leading technical teams on features from problem formulation through design, implementation, and deployment
• Experience in Machine Learning is a bonus: deep learning, Python, PyTorch, planning under uncertainty, prediction
• Education: Masters or PhD degree in Robotics, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field

The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a wide range of compensation factors including but not limited to specific skills, experience and expertise, role location, certifications, licenses, and business needs. The estimated compensation range listed in this job posting reflects base salary only. This role may include additional forms of compensation such as a bonus or company equity. The recruiter assigned to this role can share more information about the specific compensation and benefit details associated with this role during the hiring process. 

Candidates for certain positions are eligible to participate in Motional’s benefits program. Motional’s benefits include but are not limited to medical, dental, vision, 401k with a company match, health saving accounts, life insurance, pet insurance, and more.