About the roleWe're seeking Senior or Staff Engineers to help build the core behavior planning system for autonomous vehicles, enabling safe and intelligent decision-making. The role involves designing behavior tree architectures, developing robust C++ infrastructure, collaborating across autonomy teams, evaluating planner performance, and providing technical leadership within the team.
This role is onsite 5 days a week at our Santa Clara, CA office!
What you'll do- Design, implement, and maintain the core behavior planning system for autonomous vehicles, enabling intelligent, interpretable, and safe decision-making in complex real-world scenarios.
- Develop and extend behavior tree architectures for hierarchical decision logic, including support for mission planning, tactical maneuvers, and contingency handling.
- Collaborate closely with the motion planning, prediction, and control teams to ensure seamless transitions from high-level decisions to executable trajectories.
- Build and optimize C++-based software infrastructure for behavior planning, including tools for simulation, debugging, visualization, and closed-loop testing.
- Evaluate planner performance in diverse real-world and simulated environments; identify failure modes and develop strategies to improve robustness and generalization.
- Participate in design reviews and system integration across the full autonomy stack.
- Provide technical leadership, mentorship, and architectural guidance for junior team members.
What we're looking for- Ph.D. with 3+ years or Master's with 5+ years of industry experience in robotics, autonomous systems, or behavior planning.
- Proven experience in behavior planning, including use of behavior trees, finite state machines, or rule-based planners in autonomous driving or robotics applications.
- Strong proficiency in C++ with a deep understanding of performance, memory management, and software architecture in production systems.
- Solid understanding of motion planning and prediction interfaces, with experience building real-time, safety-critical systems.
- Knowledge of diffusion models and/or Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models is a strong plus.
- Strong debugging, system thinking, and collaborative communication skills.
Salary Range - $180,000- $260,000
