Senior Autonomy Engineer: Prediction & Planning

Watershed Ventures; United Kingdom; On-site; GBP 100,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Rivian in London is seeking a Senior Engineer in Prediction, Planning, and Controls to join our Autonomy team. Lead end-to-end development of learning-based and hybrid planning systems for production-oriented autonomous driving, from data and model development to in-vehicle validation.

The role requires strong robotics fundamentals, experience with transformer-based architectures, MPC, and real-time deployment. You will mentor peers and drive end-to-end delivery in a fast-paced environment.

Qualifications

• Master’s or PhD in Robotics, Control Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field.
• Strong background in autonomous driving prediction and planning, with hands-on experience in both research and deployment.
• Deep knowledge of trajectory prediction and planning methods, including transformer-based architectures and sequence modeling.
• Strong fundamentals in control and robotics, including MPC, graph search, state estimation, and vehicle behavior modeling.
• Proficiency in Python and C++ for production-quality software development.
• Hands-on experience with PyTorch and deployment acceleration frameworks (TensorRT/ONNX) in real-time systems.
• Experience with ROS/Autoware-style robotics integration and simulation-based development workflows.
• Strong understanding of open-loop vs closed-loop evaluation, KPI design, failure analysis, and safety-driven model validation.
• Demonstrated technical leadership, cross-functional collaboration, and ability to deliver under tight product timelines.
• Excellent communication and problem-solving skills in fast-paced, multidisciplinary environments.

Responsibilities

• Design and implementation of learning-based prediction and planning systems, including end-to-end models for real-world driving.
• Develop hybrid planning architectures that combine transformer-based prediction/planning with classical methods such as MPC and graph-based planning.
• Drive end-to-end ownership across data collection, dataset curation, model training, optimization, deployment, and closed-loop evaluation.
• Define and enforce safety and feasibility strategies for trajectory generation, including fallback behaviors and runtime safeguards.
• Partner with Perception and Systems teams to integrate planning models into production-like stacks and ensure robust interface contracts.
• Improve real-time inference performance for in-vehicle deployment using model optimization techniques and toolchains such as TensorRT.
• Build and scale evaluation pipelines that connect offline metrics with closed-loop behavior in simulation and on-road testing.
• Lead scenario-based validation for rare and safety-critical edge cases, and use results to drive model and system improvements.
• Mentor peers and contribute technical leadership across planning and prediction initiatives.

Skills

Python

C++

PyTorch

TensorRT

ONNX

ROS/Autoware

MPC

Graph search

Education

Master’s or PhD in Robotics

Tools

ROS/Autoware

TensorRT

ONNX

PyTorch

Job description

Rivian in London is seeking a Senior Engineer in Prediction, Planning, and Controls to join our Autonomy team. Lead end-to-end development of learning-based and hybrid planning systems for production-oriented autonomous driving, from data and model development to in-vehicle validation.

The role requires strong robotics fundamentals, experience with transformer-based architectures, MPC, and real-time deployment. You will mentor peers and drive end-to-end delivery in a fast-paced environment.