Staff Software Engineer, Motion Planning

MOTIONAL SINGAPORE PTE. LIMITED; Singapore; On-site; SGD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Motional is seeking a Staff Engineer for its Motion Planning team to develop state-of-the-art motion planning algorithms for autonomous vehicle navigation. You will design robust software, collaborate with decision and tracking modules, and enable rapid development with CI/testing pipelines.

The role emphasizes multi-quarter roadmaps, architectural ownership, and mentoring while delivering safe, comfortable vehicle behaviors across Motional's robotaxi fleet.

Qualifications

• 5-7+ years of professional software development experience in robotics or related field.
• Experience with motion planning, navigation, or safety-critical systems.
• Proven ability to lead features from problem formulation to delivery with impact.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute multi-quarter technical roadmaps and OKRs across subsystems.
• Lead technical discussions and establish team-level design processes.
• Own system-level architecture for core products and drive reliability improvements.
• Mentor team members to foster product-focused engineering and documentation.

Skills

C++

Robotics

Algorithms

Software Development

Motion Planning

Education

Bachelor's degree in Robotics/CS/EE

Job description

In our Motion Planning team, you'll apply your passion for robotics and software development for production-ready autonomous vehicles. In this role, you'll perform groundbreaking research, conduct design processes, and implement performance-critical algorithms to generate safe, comfortable, and intuitive autonomous vehicle behaviors across Motional's fleet of robotaxis.

Technical Scope:

Develop state-of-the art motion planning algorithms to ensure the vehicle autonomously navigates safely and smoothly.

Design and build robust and scalable software that enables rapid exploration and evaluation of different motion planning approaches and algorithms.

Collaborate with upstream decision/behavior planning, prediction, and downstream motion tracking algorithms.

Leverage modern development toolchains to enable rapid development cycles, including testing, simulation, and continuous integration.

Role responsibilities:

• As a staff engineer, you will be expected to define and execute multi-quarter technical roadmaps and OKRs that span across multiple sub-systems and influence partner teams' technical directions
• Lead technical discussions and establish team-level processes for system-level design, review, and the implementation of advanced features and formulation improvements
• Own system-level architecture for core products, driving org-wide incident response and severity reviews to proactively optimize on-road performance and overall system reliability.
• Mentor junior and senior team members to cultivate a department-wide culture of product-focused engineering, robust documentation, and continuous technical learning.

What we're looking for:

• 5-7+ years of professional software development experience, preferably in C++.
• Bachelor's required, Masters or PhD degree preferred in Robotics, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
• Experience with algorithm development in motion planning, navigation, or any robotics or safety-critical systems.
• Experience owning and leading technical development on features from problem formulation through algorithm design and implementation to delivery with impact.