Senior Motion-Planning Engineer – Autonomous Vehicles

Booster; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Gatik is seeking senior or staff software engineers to join the planning team in Santa Clara, CA, to build motion planning and decision-making systems. The role involves developing planning algorithms and integrating perception, prediction, and control for safe, efficient autonomous driving.

This onsite position emphasizes collaboration with behavior, control, and mapping teams. The ideal candidate has a PhD with 3+ years or a Master’s with 5+ years in robotics, with strong C++ skills and

Qualifications

• PhD with 3+ years or MS with 5+ years in robotics or autonomous systems.
• Experience in lattice-based planning, trajectory optimization, model predictive control, or search-based planning.
• Strong C++ production-quality code in real-time or safety-critical systems.
• Solid understanding of vehicle dynamics, control interfaces, and motion feasibility constraints.
• Experience with simulation tools and debugging motion planner behavior in realistic driving environments.
• Knowledge of diffusion models and/or Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models is a strong plus.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and optimize the motion planning stack for autonomous vehicles, enabling safe, comfortable, and efficient driving in diverse real-world environments.
• Develop lattice-based planners, sampling-based planners, and optimization-based methods for generating dynamically feasible, collision-free trajectories.
• Integrate constraints from perception, prediction, and control to generate context-aware motion plans under uncertainty.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with behavior planning, control, and mapping teams to ensure robust and consistent planning behavior.
• Optimize and maintain C++-based infrastructure for trajectory generation, evaluation, and deployment in real-time onboard systems.
• Analyze closed-loop simulation and on-road performance; identify and resolve failure cases involving traffic interactions, occlusions, or dynamic obstacles.

Skills

Analytical skills

Cross-functional collaboration

System debugging

Education

PhD in robotics

Masters in robotics

Tools

C++

Real-time systems

Job description

Gatik is seeking senior or staff software engineers to join the planning team in Santa Clara, CA, to build motion planning and decision-making systems. The role involves developing planning algorithms and integrating perception, prediction, and control for safe, efficient autonomous driving.

This onsite position emphasizes collaboration with behavior, control, and mapping teams. The ideal candidate has a PhD with 3+ years or a Master’s with 5+ years in robotics, with strong C++ skills and