Autonomy Engineer- Behavior and Motion Planning (R6007)

Job Description:

What you'll do:

 

  - Research, design, and implement state-of-the-art algorithms for autonomous trajectory planning
    and control for single and multi-agent systems.
  - Build reliable, robust, and maintainable software, primarily in modern C++, with Python used for
    prototyping, analysis, automation, and testing.
  - Develop comprehensive tests and evaluate planning stack performance in simulation and, where
    applicable, on real hardware.
  - Diagnose complex algorithmic and software failures, including concurrency, performance, and
    integration issues.
  - Collaborate with teams across the organization to refine requirements and deliver capabilities
    that meet operational needs.\
  - Contribute to the design and architecture of scalable, maintainable autonomy and software
    architecture.
  - Take new product features from ideation to verification, to flight testing, and all the way to
    maturation.
  - Mentor and provide technical guidance to junior engineers.
  - Stay current with the latest advancements in robotics, and apply them to solve challenging
    problems.

Projects you might work on:

  - Motion planning that produces safe, dynamically feasible behavior under real-world constraints.
  - Collaborative and distributed motion planning for multi-agent scenarios.
  - Effects and action planning that connects mission intent to executable autonomous behaviors.
  - Incorporating various types of motion and dynamics models into the planning stack.
  - Write software that allows the customer to interact with payloads safely.
  - Planning approaches that incorporate vision-language models (VLMs), vision-language-action models
    (VLAs), or other learned components.
  - Validate the planning stack using software-, hardware-, and vehicle-in-the-loop simulation of
    complex autonomous missions.

Required qualifications:

 

  - Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, applied mathematics, operations research, or
    a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
  - Demonstrated experience through professional work, internships, research, or substantial projects
    building, testing, and debugging nontrivial C++ software for optimization, motion planning,
    robotics, autonomous systems, or a closely related algorithmic domain.
  - Experience writing and debugging modern C++, including safe use of common concurrency patterns
    and the ability to diagnose issues such as data races, deadlocks, and lifetime errors.
  - Working experience with Python for prototyping, analysis, automation, or testing.
  - Strong software engineering fundamentals, including algorithms, data structures, testing,
    debugging, version control, CI/CD, and maintainable software design.
  - Practical experience developing and debugging software on Linux.
  - Ability to communicate technical decisions and collaborate effectively across disciplines.
  - For senior-level candidates: Master's degree in computer science, Robotics, or a related field
    and 5+ years of relevant professional experience or PhD with 4+ years of relevant experience.

Ways to stand out:

  - Experience with behavior/motion planning for any platform (aerial, maritime, space, or ground),
    working on decentralized or distributed planning for multi-agent systems, or trajectory
    optimization.
  - Experience working on multi-objective optimization problems.
  - Experience using solvers such as Gurobi, OR-Tools, or CPLEX.
  - Experience applying VLMs or VLAs to motion planning, reasoning, tool use, or autonomous decision-
    making in safety critical systems.
  - Experience delivering software for fielded, real-time, safety-critical, or resource-constrained
    autonomous systems.
  - Experience with software-in-the-loop or hardware-in-the-loop simulation, performance profiling,
    or distributed systems.
  - Evidence of relevant technical depth through fielded systems, applied research, publications,
    open-source contributions, or robotics and autonomy competitions.