Senior Motion Planning Engineer - Trajectory Generation

Role Description

On our Motion team, you will leverage your expertise in motion planning, robotics, and software development to advance the capabilities of production-ready autonomous vehicles. In this role, you will conduct innovative research, lead design processes, and implement performance-critical algorithms that enable safe, comfortable, and intuitive autonomous vehicle behaviors across Motional’s fleet of robotaxis.

If you are passionate about autonomous driving, thrive on solving challenging optimization problems, and are eager to make a significant impact in a rapidly evolving field, we want to hear from you.

Technical Scope:

• Develop state-of-the-art motion control and trajectory optimization algorithms to ensure safe and comfortable vehicle motion
• Design and build robust and scalable software that enables real on-road impact by evaluating different control techniques and motion planning algorithms
• Provides high-quality code and design reviews (C++) based on a deep understanding of the teams’ services and technologies
• Leverage modern development toolchains, including testing, simulation, and continuous integration, to enable rapid development cycles

Role responsibilities:

• Understands and explains trade-offs, complex concepts to peers and leaders to drive decisions.
• Collaborate with teams working on (ML) decision/behavior planning, prediction, and vehicle control to build comprehensive and integrated solutions
• Creates project proposals that drive long-term technical roadmaps and span multiple sub-systems.
• Mentor junior team members to develop a culture of product-focused engineering, research, and development.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of C++ software development
• Bachelors, Masters, or PhD degree preferred in Robotics, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
• Experience with Model Predictive Control (MPC), motion planning, planning under uncertainty, vehicle dynamics and control, and simulation environments
• Understanding of numerical optimization algorithms (interior point method, sequential quadratic programming, etc)
• Experience with optimization solvers (IPOPT, Gurobi, etc)
• Past experience owning and leading technical development on features from problem formulation, algorithm design, through implementation
• Knowledge of Python is a bonus

Requirements

• We encourage a hybrid schedule with in-office time at one of our locations in Boston or Pittsburgh to support collaboration, or this role can be fully remote.

Benefits

• 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.

Salary Range

$172,000 — $229,000 USD

Company Description

Motional is a driverless technology company making autonomous vehicles a safe, reliable, and accessible reality. We’re driven by something more.

• Our journey is always people first.
• We aren't just developing driverless cars; we're creating safer roadways, more equitable transportation options, and making our communities better places to live, work, and connect.
• Our team is made up of engineers, researchers, innovators, dreamers and doers, who are creating a technology with the potential to transform the way we move.
• We’re creating first-of-its-kind technology that will transform transportation.
• We believe in building a great place to work through a progressive, global culture that is diverse, inclusive, and ensures people feel valued at every level of the organization.
• Our team is behind some of the industry's largest leaps forward, including the first fully-autonomous cross-country drive in the U.S, the launch of the world's first robotaxi pilot, and operation of the world's longest-standing public robotaxi fleet.
• Formed as a joint venture between Hyundai Motor Group and Aptiv, Motional is fundamentally changing how people move through their lives.