Senior Software Engineer, Behavior Planning
About The Position
Kodiak Robotics, Inc. is a leader in autonomous ground transportation, developing AI-powered technology for commercial trucking and the public sector. The company delivers freight daily across the southern United States using its autonomous technology and was the first to publicly announce delivering a driverless semi-truck to a customer. Kodiak is also applying its self-driving software for the U.S. Department of Defense. This role focuses on building and improving behavior planning and motion planning systems for autonomous driving, with the engineer owning planning features end-to-end. The position involves working on real-world autonomy behavior to ensure safe, comfortable, and effective decisions in complex driving scenarios. It is ideal for individuals with strong planning experience who enjoy building production-quality autonomy software and collaborating across the autonomy stack.
Requirements
- Experience in behavior planning, motion planning, decision-making, robotics, autonomous vehicles, or related areas.
- Strong software engineering skills, preferably in C++.
- Experience building autonomy software in industrial, production, or near-production environments.
- Ability to debug complex robotics or autonomy behavior using logs, metrics, and simulation.
- Strong system-level judgment around safety, comfort, and deployment readiness.
- Strong collaboration and communication skills.
Responsibilities
- Design, implement, and improve behavior planning and motion planning features.
- Own planning projects from problem definition through deployment.
- Debug autonomy behavior using logs, simulation, metrics, and real-world data.
- Improve how the autonomy system balances safety, comfort, progress, and operational constraints.
- Collaborate with teams across Prediction, Controls, Perception, ML, Simulation, Systems, and Safety.
- Define success metrics and validation plans for planning features.
- Write production-quality C++ software.
- Participate in technical design reviews, code reviews, and architecture discussions.
- Mentor junior and senior engineers.
Benefits
- Competitive compensation package including equity and annual bonuses
- Excellent Medical, Dental, and Vision plans through Kaiser Permanente, Cigna, and MetLife (including a medical plan with infertility benefits)
- MetLife Legal Services, Identity & Fraud Protection, Hospital Indemnity Insurance, Accident Insurance, & Critical Illness Insurance
- Flexible PTO, 10 paid holidays, and generous parental leave policies
- Office perks: dog-friendly, free catered lunch, a fully stocked kitchen, and free EV charging
- Long Term Disability, Short Term Disability, Life Insurance
- Wellbeing Benefits - Headspace through Cigna, Calm through Kaiser, One Medical, Gympass, Spring Health through Cigna, Rula (mental health navigation)
- Fidelity 401(k)
- Commuter, FSA, Dependent Care FSA, HSA
- Various incentive programs (referral bonuses, patent bonuses, etc.)
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
