Senior Robotics Planning Engineer (Autonomous Vehicles)

Location: San Francisco, CA; onsite five days a week. Periodic travel to customer sites of up to 5% may be required, and some schedule flexibility may be needed during deployments.

Salary: $176,000–$240,000 per year, plus potential equity awards.

Company

hirify.global develops and deploys autonomous vehicle technology and Autonomous Haulage Systems for mining, quarrying, and construction operations.

What you will do

• Develop motion-planning algorithms, from path planning through trajectory optimization, for large autonomous haul trucks.
• Build multi-agent coordination systems that prevent collisions and deadlocks while maximizing fleet throughput.
• Develop fleet-planning and dispatch algorithms that assign trucks based on site-wide operational state.
• Create simulation, visualization, replay, and scenario-testing tools for validating planning systems.
• Optimize planning algorithms for real-time production performance and debug fleet-level issues using logged data.
• Collaborate with controls engineers to ensure planned paths are executable.

Requirements

• BS, MS, or PhD in Robotics, Computer Science, or a related field.
• 3+ years of professional software development experience, excluding internships.
• Strong foundation in motion-planning algorithms, computational geometry, collision detection, and polygon operations.
• Understanding of vehicle kinematics and nonholonomic constraints.
• Proficiency in Python and NumPy for numerical computing.
• Ability to analyze algorithm complexity and optimize systems for real-time performance.

Nice to have

• Experience with multi-agent coordination, scheduling, fleet management, or dispatch systems.
• Familiarity with Dubins/Reeds-Shepp curves, trajectory optimization, DCBF, or MPC-based planners.
• Experience with graph algorithms such as Dijkstra and heuristic search.
• Knowledge of GEOS, Shapely, Redis, ZeroMQ, or similar infrastructure.
• Familiarity with modern ML techniques for planning problems.

Culture & Benefits

• Work on production-deployed autonomy technology in real-world industrial environments.
• Collaborate closely with experienced engineers and industry operators in a high-ownership environment.
• Use Python as the primary language and C++ for performance-critical modules, with NumPy, Shapely, Numba, and SciPy.
• USA full-time exempt employees receive medical, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance, plus FSA/HSA options.
• Benefits include 401(k), equity, sick time, unlimited flexible time off, paid holidays, paid parental leave, and pre-tax commuter benefits.
• Team lunches are provided at the SoMa office on Tuesdays and Thursdays.