Staff Engineer (Planning / Decision Making)

Oxa Autonomy; Oxford; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading company specializing in autonomous vehicles is seeking a strategic leader for their AV Decision Making team. This role involves spearheading the implementation of driving policies, ensuring safety and predictability while harnessing advanced robotics and AI techniques. The successful candidate will manage a dynamic team, collaborate across departments, and contribute to innovative solutions in autonomous driving.

Benefits

Competitive salary, benchmarked against the market

Company share programme

Hybrid and/or flexible work arrangements

£3,000 flexible benefits package

Salary exchange pension plan

25 days annual leave plus bank holidays

Pet-friendly office environment

Qualifications

• PhD or MS in related fields with extensive industry experience.
• Experience with autonomous driving behavior and decision making.
• Strong C++ skills and some Python development experience.

Responsibilities

• Lead the AV Decision Making team and develop AV reasoning software.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure safe AV operation.
• Drive engineering lifecycle from design to deployment.

Skills

Behavior Planning

Decision Making

Trajectory Planning

Robotics Fundamentals

C++

Python

AI/ML techniques

Education

PhD in Mech Eng, Aerospace, Comp Science, Robotics, Mechatronics

MS in Mech Eng, Aerospace, Comp Science, Robotics, Mechatronics

Job description

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Client:

Location:

Oxford, United Kingdom

Job Category:

Other

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EU work permit required:

Yes

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Job Reference:

6604e4d3df6c

Job Views:

3

Posted:

25.06.2025

Expiry Date:

09.08.2025

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Job Description:

We are looking for a leader to head our AV Decision Making team. In this role, you will spearhead the design, implementation, testing, and deployment of the driving policy, ensuring our AVs drive like humans – predictably and safely. Your primary focus will be on behavior and manoeuvre planning for Oxa’s different on-road and off-road applications, utilising state-of-the-art robotics and AI algorithms. You will collaborate extensively across the company, working closely with other Planning teams (like Machine Learning and Trajectory Planning), upstream teams (such as Perception), and various other groups in a highly cross-functional environment.

We are looking for a leader to head our AV Decision Making team. In this role, you will spearhead the design, implementation, testing, and deployment of the driving policy, ensuring our AVs drive like humans – predictably and safely. Your primary focus will be on behavior and manoeuvre planning for Oxa’s different on-road and off-road applications, utilising state-of-the-art robotics and AI algorithms. You will collaborate extensively across the company, working closely with other Planning teams (like Machine Learning and Trajectory Planning), upstream teams (such as Perception), and various other groups in a highly cross-functional environment.

Your Team

You will join our Planning Team, where we are building the core Engine that defines how Oxa's Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) behave and move, all based on their real-time understanding of the environment.

In this role, you will:

1. Lead and manage the AV Decision Making team, which is responsible for the development, integration, and deployment of AV reasoning software that drives our AVs through complex on-road and off-road environments.
2. Take ownership of the architecture and strategic direction of your team, and overall shape the development of the Oxa Driver.
3. Promote a cross-functional development style and closely collaborate with routing, trajectory planning, machine learning, and other teams to achieve human-like, predictable, and safe AV driving behaviors.
4. Drive the adoption of engineering and software development best practices in your team.
5. Create appropriate metrics and tools to measure and benchmark the performance of the planning software stack deployed in various environments.
6. Take ownership of the engineering lifecycle, including scoping, design, implementation, testing, deployment, and maintenance of your team's work.
7. Document and train others on your team's work, focus on improving features, and understand the business and customer value of your team's work.
8. Spearhead hiring and onboarding by defining role responsibilities and requirements, leading interviews, engaging in recruiting outreach for your team, and mentoring and developing new team members.
9. Positively impact product quality, customer experience, and maintainability, and identify projects that improve team processes and solutions.

Requirements

What you need to succeed:

1. PhD in related field (Mech Eng, Aerospace, Comp Science, Robotics, Mechatronics) with significant years of industry experience is desired
2. MS in related field (Mech Eng, Aerospace, Comp Science, Robotics, Mechatronics) with extensive years of industry experience is acceptable
3. Practical experience with Behaviour Planning, Decision Making and Trajectory Planning for autonomous driving
4. Prior tech lead and people management experience in a robotics software development team (preferably focused on autonomous driving), guiding and mentoring team members.
5. A deep understanding of Robotics Fundamentals, including:

• Robotics architectures
• 2D/3D Geometry & transformations
• Vehicle kinematics and dynamics
• Probability handling and uncertainty representation

Bonus: Solid understanding of Trajectory Optimisation

Experience with integrating and deploying complex robotics algorithms on target hardware in safety-critical environments.

Strong C++ and basic Python software development skills, including modern C++ algorithm development and deployment in a production environment.

Deep understanding of modern software engineering practices, including automated testing and CI.

Understanding of AI/ML techniques for decision making and/or motion planning in the AV space.

Extra kudos:

• A customer-obsessed mindset. We value people who relentlessly try to anticipate and prioritise the needs of our customers. We call it ‘inventing on their behalf.’
• Familiarity with Google Cloud Platform.
• Relevant publications or talks in robotics or related conferences/journals.

Benefits

We provide:

• Competitive salary, benchmarked against the market and reviewed annually
• Company share programme
• Hybrid and/or flexible work arrangements
• An outstanding £3,000 flexible benefits including private medical insurance, critical illness coverage, life assurance, EAP, group income protection
• A salary exchange pension plan
• 25 days’ annual leave plus bank holidays
• A pet-friendly office environment
• Safe assigned spaces for team members with individual and diverse needs