Software Engineer - Motion Planning (Fallback Stack)
$60k - $300k • Sunnyvale • FullTime
Posted 6mo ago
Remote Work Policy
On-site
Employment Type
FullTime
Categories
Applied AI Engineer
About the job
Applied Intuition is seeking a Motion Planning Engineer for their Fallback Stack team. This role focuses on designing and implementing deterministic, safety-critical planning systems to ensure autonomous vehicles operate safely during degraded autonomy or uncertainty. The position emphasizes classical motion planning, predictable behavior, and large-scale evaluation, rather than deep learning-driven planning. You will contribute to a dynamic, customer-focused team culture and help shape best practices in the autonomy industry, making a significant impact on the development of autonomous systems.
Responsibilities
- Design and implement classical or ML motion planners for fallback and minimal-risk maneuvers.
- Build planners that operate reliably under degraded perception, partial observability, and system faults.
- Define and execute safe, deterministic vehicle motions such as controlled slow-downs, pull-overs, and safe stops.
- Use large-scale simulation and real-world data to evaluate planner behavior and guide parameter tuning.
- Develop metrics, analysis tools, and dashboards to understand planner performance at scale.
- Collaborate closely with behavior prediction, perception, controls, safety, and remote assistance teams.
- Contribute to a reusable fallback platform used across trucking and other autonomy programs.
Requirements
- 5+ years of experience in motion planning for autonomous vehicles or robotics.
- Strong foundation in robotic motion planning algorithms and trajectory generation (optimization-, search-, or rule-based).
- Experience building deterministic, safety-critical planning systems.
- A data-driven mindset for large-scale evaluation, debugging, and tuning of planning behavior.
- Proficiency in C++ and experience working in real-time systems.
- Strong systems thinking and cross-functional collaboration skills.
Benefits
- Base salary
- Equity (options and/or restricted stock units)
- Comprehensive health, dental, vision, life and disability insurance coverage
- 401k retirement benefits with employer match
- Learning and wellness stipends
- Paid time off