Senior Staff Motion Planning Engineer - Autonomous Driving

Lucid Motors USA, Inc.; Newark, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 217,000 - 318,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

Life insurance

Disability coverage

Paid time off

Paid holidays

401(k) retirement plan

Equity program

Cash incentive program

Job summary

Lucid Motors is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer to advance motion planning and controls for autonomous driving, focused on auto-parking and low-speed autonomy. You will lead trajectory optimization, path smoothing, and local planning, with impact on production-grade software.

Based onsite in Newark, CA, you’ll collaborate across teams to deliver scalable solutions. The role demands deep expertise in C/C++, real-time systems, and embedded platforms, with a track record of shipping ADAS

Qualifications

• M.S. or Ph.D. in Robotics, Control, Electrical Engineering, or related field.
• 10+ years of software development experience in autonomous driving, ADAS, or robotics, with a focus on large-scale data and real-time systems
• Strong programming skills in C/C++ with solid understanding of software engineering design principles and best practices
• Proven track record of delivering ADAS/AD features through the full production lifecycle: requirements analysis, architecture/design, implementation, unit testing, feature tuning, SIL/HIL validation, and in-vehicle deployment
• Hands-on experience with software integration on embedded platforms (e.g., NVIDIA Xavier/Orin, Infineon Aurix)
• Demonstrated ability to build reliable production-grade systems, including large-scale architectures, evaluation pipelines, and performance-optimized models
• Leadership experience

Responsibilities

• Support the auto-parking and low-speed autonomy stack focusing on trajectory optimization, path smoothing, and local planning.
• Refactor and scale planning stack architecture for maintainability and extensibility.
• Optimize CPU usage and explore parallel/GPU acceleration opportunities.
• Investigate and resolve curvature discontinuities, velocity/trajectory mismatches, and edge-case steering behavior.
• Evaluate and prototype new approaches (e.g., learned models, barrier functions, ML-based planning).
• Drive technical discussions and share algorithm insights across teams

Skills

C/C++ programming

Robotics/Autonomous driving

Real-time systems

Leadership

Education

MS/PhD in Robotics/Control/EE

Tools

NVIDIA Xavier/Orin

Infineon Aurix

Job description

Lucid Motors is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer to advance motion planning and controls for autonomous driving, focused on auto-parking and low-speed autonomy. You will lead trajectory optimization, path smoothing, and local planning, with impact on production-grade software.

Based onsite in Newark, CA, you’ll collaborate across teams to deliver scalable solutions. The role demands deep expertise in C/C++, real-time systems, and embedded platforms, with a track record of shipping ADAS