Senior AV Planner - L4 Robotaxi Trajectory Architect

NVIDIA AI; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 224,000 - 357,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Benefits

Job summary

NVIDIA is seeking a Senior Software Engineer, AV Planner to develop and integrate behavior and trajectory planning for L4 robotaxi systems in urban environments. You will build, optimize, and verify planning modules, collaborating with prediction, perception, mapping, and controls teams to ensure safe, comfortable vehicle operation.

Required background includes 12+ years in the field, strong C/C++ skills, and experience with motion planning, vehicle dynamics, and real-time systems.

Qualifications

• BS, MS, or higher degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, or equivalent experience.
• 12+ years of experience in the relevant field.
• Strong software engineering skills in C/C++ (production-quality, performance-aware, testable code); Python experience for tooling/evaluation is a plus.
• Knowledge and hands-on background in motion planning, decision-making, optimization, search, sampling-based planning, geometry, vehicle dynamics/kinematics, real-time systems.
• Experience building and using simulation and evaluation pipelines, writing unit/integration tests, and preventing regressions via automation.
• Strong debugging skills across multi-module systems; ability to turn ambiguous on-road/sim failures into actionable fixes.
• Ability to communicate clearly and collaborate effectively across functions (prediction/perception/controls/safety).

Responsibilities

• Develop and ship behavior and trajectory planning for an L4 robotaxi (lane changes, merges, intersections, unprotected turns, yielding, stop-and-go, curbside operations).
• Design planning technologies needed to build the AV software stack; write new software modules from scratch that drive vehicles safely and comfortably in dense urban environments.
• Build optimization-, sampling-, and/or search-based planning approaches with vehicle dynamics and constraints (collision avoidance, comfort/jerk limits, road-rule compliance).
• Define and implement fallback and degraded-mode behaviors (e.g., safe stop / minimal risk maneuvers) and contribute to safety-oriented design (failure modes, redundancy, validation evidence).
• Integrate planning with prediction, perception, mapping/localization, and controls; define clean interfaces and troubleshoot end-to-end system issues using logs and scenario replay.
• Build and improve offline and closed-loop simulation benchmarks and metrics for planning quality (safety, legality, comfort, progress), and drive regression prevention.
• Define and build tools to accelerate debugging, scenario triage/mining, evaluation automation, and parameter/config management across vehicle platforms.
• Drive integration efforts across different platforms/vehicle types; support on-vehicle issue reproduction and resolution.
• Most importantly, work on groundbreaking and innovative technology, tackle difficult problems, and help build a world-class system!

Skills

C/C++

Python

Motion planning

Vehicle dynamics

Real-time systems

Debugging

Education

BS/MS or higher in CS/EE/Robotics

Job description

NVIDIA is seeking a Senior Software Engineer, AV Planner to develop and integrate behavior and trajectory planning for L4 robotaxi systems in urban environments. You will build, optimize, and verify planning modules, collaborating with prediction, perception, mapping, and controls teams to ensure safe, comfortable vehicle operation.

Required background includes 12+ years in the field, strong C/C++ skills, and experience with motion planning, vehicle dynamics, and real-time systems.