Principal Motion Planning Engineer (Robotics)

Location: Hybrid in the Boston, MA area, with regular on-site work and occasional travel to customer deployment sites.

Company

hirify.global develops autonomous warehouse unload robots and software for warehouse automation.

What you will do

• Own the technical vision, architecture, interfaces, and documentation for the motion planning and controls stack.
• Develop production systems for sample-based planning, trajectory optimization, numerical optimization, and contact-aware control.
• Set technical standards and strategy across the robotics organization while influencing high-stakes engineering decisions.
• Mentor engineers, review designs, and provide deep technical leadership without direct people management.
• Analyze field failures and design autonomous recovery systems that improve robot reliability.
• Build regression tests, benchmarks, success metrics, and production-grade Python and C++ components.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience building robotics software, or equivalent deep graduate research experience in robotics and controls.
• Expert hands-on experience with motion planning and control for real-world robots in safety-critical, real-time production systems.
• Mastery of sample-based planning such as RRT, path and trajectory optimization, numerical and nonlinear optimization, and optimal or contact-aware control.
• Expert-level Python and C++, plus ROS/ROS2, Git, Linux, and numerical optimization libraries.
• Experience with robotics testing, CI, benchmarking, architecture, technical strategy, and failure analysis.
• Professional fluency in English and availability for regular on-site work in the Boston area.

Culture & Benefits

• Full-time employment in a robotics engineering organization.
• Technical leadership is exercised through individual contribution, mentorship, and influence rather than direct people management.
• Occasional schedule flexibility is expected for customer deployments, demonstrations, and testing.
• Occasional travel to customer deployment sites is required.