Software Engineer, II - Motion Control (Autonomous Vehicles)

Location: Blacksburg, Virginia office in a hybrid capacity. U.S. citizenship is required.

Salary: $139,000–$166,800 USD per year, plus potential 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 vehicle motion models and control actuation strategies for autonomous trucks.
• Model vehicle kinematic and dynamic constraints, including braking, steering, acceleration, gear shifting, stability control, terrain, incline, wind, and rolling resistance.
• Develop production-quality modern C++ software in Linux environments and implement degraded-operation capabilities for fail-safe driving.
• Validate controller performance and simulation fidelity across Software-in-the-Loop, Hardware-in-the-Loop, and Vehicle-in-the-Loop environments.
• Collaborate with motion planning, perception, safety, simulation, and validation engineers on reliable autonomous driving behaviors.
• Debug vehicle behavior through simulation, real-time diagnostics, log analysis, integration, deployment, and on-vehicle testing.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, robotics, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, or a related field with 4+ years of industry experience; alternatively, a master’s degree with 2+ years or a PhD with 1+ years of experience.
• Experience developing robotics, autonomous vehicle, ADAS, or other complex real-time software systems.
• Strong proficiency in modern C++ on Linux and experience with Git, build systems, package management, software design, and scalable development practices.
• Strong experience developing, testing, and tuning controllers, with an understanding of control theory, stability analysis, vehicle dynamics, kinematics, trajectory feasibility, and control-system architecture.
• Experience characterizing, modeling, and simulating robotic systems, supporting on-vehicle testing and deployment, and performing real-time diagnostics and post-analysis.
• Understanding of test automation and unit-testing frameworks such as pytest, Robot Framework, or gtest, plus strong system-level debugging and collaboration skills.

Nice to have

• Experience with Model Predictive Control, convex, quadratic, or nonlinear optimization.
• Low-level driver development using CAN or Ethernet, and software development in both C++ and Python.
• Machine learning techniques such as imitation learning, reinforcement learning, or hybrid planning architectures.
• ROS/ROS2, Autoware, Apollo, large-scale autonomy validation, CUDA, GPU acceleration, TensorRT, or high-performance computing experience.
• Open-source contributions related to embedded Linux, robotics, or deployment automation.

Culture & Benefits

• Collaborative, energetic, and team-focused work environment.
• 100% 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 the start date, and company-wide holiday office closures.
• AD&D and life insurance, plus potential sign-on payments, relocation support, and other compensation components depending on the position.