Staff Software Engineer, Planner

We are seeking a seasoned Senior Planner Engineer with a proven track record of shipping production-level autonomy systems, with deep expertise in motion planning and trajectory optimization for unstructured, highly dynamic environments. The engineers will design, implement, and deploy behavior and motion planning algorithms that generate safe, reliable, and efficient motion plans amid uncertain agent behaviors and real-time unstructured constraints enable safe, reliable, and fully autonomous delivery. The ideal candidate has lived through the full development lifecycle of an autonomous product and intimately understands the practical challenges and trade-offs required to build planning systems that are not just novel, but robust, reliable, and performant. You will be a key technical voice, expected to solve our most critical challenges by drawing upon your extensive prior experience in the field. You're excited about this opportunity because you will... • Design and ship real-time behavior and motion planning features for complex urban/suburb driving scenarios. Especially motion planning and trajectory optimization for unstructured highly dynamic environments • Lead automation of root-cause analysis and systematically eliminate planner-related disengagements and long-tail failures. • Build scalable evaluation, simulation, and validation frameworks to ensure safe rollout to new geo-fenced regions. • Collaborate cross-functionally with perception, prediction, controls, and platform teams to deliver end-to-end autonomy improvements. • Contribute to architecture decisions that improve planner robustness, generalization, and computational efficiency. We're excited about you because... • You have a BS/MS/PhD in CS, EE, Robotics, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience. • You have strong C++ software engineering experience building robust, production-quality systems. • You have experience developing or deploying motion planning, trajectory optimization, robotics, or real-time decision-making systems. • You are comfortable working with data-driven evaluation, simulation, and performance metrics to guide engineering decisions. We expect this position to be filled by 12/21/2026 Compensation The successful candidate's starting pay will fall within the pay range listed below and is determined based on job-related factors including, but not limited to, skills, experience, qualifications, work location, and market conditions. Base salary is localized according to an employee's work location. Ranges are market-dependent and may be modified in the future. In addition to base salary, the compensation for this role includes opportunities for equity grants. Talk to your recruiter for more information. DoorDash cares about you and your overall well-being. That's why we offer a comprehensive benefits package to all regular employees, which includes a 401(k) plan with employer matching, 16 weeks of paid parental leave, wellness benefits, commuter benefits match, paid time off and paid sick leave in compliance with applicable laws (e.g. Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act). DoorDash also offers medical, dental, and vision benefits, 11 paid holidays, disability and basic life insurance, family-forming assistance, and a mental health program, among others. To learn more about our benefits, visit our careers page here. See below for paid time off details: • For salaried roles: flexible paid time off/vacation, plus 80 hours of paid sick time per year. • For hourly roles: vacation accrued at about 1 hour for every 25.97 hours worked (e.g. about 6.7 hours/month if working 40 hours/week; about 3.4 hours/month if working 20 hours/week), and paid sick time accrued at 1 hour for every 30 hours worked (e.g. about 5.8 hours/month if working 40 hours/week; about 2.9 hours/month if working 20 hours/week). The national base pay range for this position within the United States, including Illinois and Colorado. $198,600-$292,000 USD