Senior Motion Planning Engineer - Trajectory Optimization (Autonomous Vehicles)

Location: Remote in the United States and Canada, or hybrid office work in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Blacksburg, Virginia; or Fort Worth, Texas.

Hiring range: $160,800–$193,000 USD, plus bonus and stock options.

Company

Develops software for automated trucks and autonomous driving systems as part of the Daimler family.

What you will do

• Design, develop, and optimize motion planning, trajectory generation, trajectory selection, behavior planning, and decision-making algorithms for autonomous trucks.
• Apply graph search, sampling-based planning, convex optimization, quadratic programming, spline trajectories, and Frenet-frame approaches.
• Incorporate vehicle kinematic and dynamic constraints to deliver safe, feasible, and comfortable vehicle behavior.
• Build production-quality modern C++ software in Linux and contribute to scalable autonomy system architecture.
• Validate planning systems across Software-in-the-Loop, Hardware-in-the-Loop, and Vehicle-in-the-Loop environments.
• Collaborate with Controls, Perception, Safety, Simulation, and Validation teams; investigate vehicle behavior and support integration, deployment, and post-deployment debugging.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree with 5+ years of industry experience, or a master’s degree with 3+ years, or a PhD with 1+ years of experience.
• Strong proficiency in modern C++ and Linux-based development.
• Experience developing robotics, autonomous vehicle, ADAS, or other complex real-time software systems.
• Experience with motion planning, trajectory generation or optimization, behavior planning, or decision-making systems.
• Understanding of vehicle dynamics, vehicle kinematics, linear algebra, numerical optimization, geometry, robotics algorithms, and planning system architecture.
• Strong software engineering, system design, debugging, communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills.

Nice to have

• Experience with MPC, convex, quadratic, or nonlinear optimization; imitation learning; reinforcement learning; or hybrid planning architectures.
• Experience with Python, ROS/ROS2, Autoware, Apollo, simulation platforms, and large-scale autonomy validation.
• Experience with state estimation, trajectory tracking, CUDA, GPU acceleration, TensorRT, or high-performance computing.
• Experience with on-vehicle testing, machine learning integration, and production deployment.

Culture & Benefits

• Collaborative, energetic, and team-focused work environment.
• 100% company-paid medical, dental, and vision premiums for full-time employees.
• 401(k) plan with a 6% employer match.
• Flexible scheduling, generous paid vacation available immediately after start, and company-wide holiday closures.
• AD&D and life insurance.