Staff, Software Engineer - Motion Planning (Unstructured Environments)
Leads development of motion planning algorithms for autonomous trucks, designing trajectory generation and optimization systems in C++ on Linux to ensure safe navigation in unstructured environments.
- Compensation
- $186.2K–$223.4K / yr
- Location
- Blacksburg, VA, Remote - US
- Work setup
- Remote
- Seniority
- Staff
- Employment
- Full time
- Experience
- 5+ years
- Category
- Software engineering
- Posted
Skills
Nice to have
- Experience with Model Predictive Path Integral (MPPI), Model Predictive Control (MPC), convex optimization, quadratic programming (QP), nonlinear optimization, or other optimization-based planning tec
- Experience applying machine learning techniques such as imitation learning, reinforcement learning, or hybrid planning architectures.
- Experience integrating machine learning models into real-time or production systems.
- Experience working with simulation platforms and large-scale autonomy validation environments.
- Experience with robotics frameworks such as ROS/ROS2, Autoware, Apollo, or similar autonomy platforms.
- Exposure to CUDA, GPU acceleration, TensorRT, or high-performance compute environments.
- Experience supporting on-vehicle testing, debugging, and deployment activities.
- Passion for autonomous vehicles, robotics, and solving complex real-world engineering challenges.
- Contributions to open-source projects related to embedded Linux, robotics, or deployment automation.
Full description
About The Company:
At Torc, we have always believed that autonomous vehicle technology will transform how we travel, move freight, and do business. A leader in autonomous driving since 2007, Torc has spent over a decade commercializing our solutions with experienced partners. Now a part of the Daimler family, we are focused solely on developing software for automated trucks to transform how the world moves freight. Join us and catapult your career with the company that helped pioneer autonomous technology, and the first AV software company with the vision to partner directly with a truck manufacturer.
Meet The Team:
Torc is hiring a Staff Motion Planning Engineer to lead technical development for the planning, prediction, and decision-making systems that determine how our autonomous trucks navigate the world safely, efficiently, and predictably. Our team operates at the intersection of robotics, machine learning, optimization, simulation, and safety, building the core autonomy capabilities that translate perception into action.
What You'll Do:
This role is focused on motion planning, trajectory generation, and trajectory optimization for autonomous vehicles in unstructured environments. You will provide technical leadership across teams and platforms, driving architectural strategy, engineering excellence, and scalable system design. You will lead high-impact technical initiatives, influence long-term engineering direction, and contribute directly to the design, development, validation, and deployment of planning capabilities.
This role operates at a multi-team level with broad organizational impact. You will work closely with engineers and leaders across autonomy, controls, simulation, safety, and validation to help deliver safe, robust, and reliable autonomy behaviors at scale.
- Technical Leadership
- Defining and maintaining the architectural vision across teams, platforms, and services to ensure scalability, reliability, maintainability, long-term technical alignment, and consistency of software design patterns
- Supporting Engineering Managers and Senior ICs in resolving complex technical design, architecture, and implementation challenges across multiple domains while balancing feasibility against business objectives
- Establishing and promoting engineering best practices for code quality, automated testing, performance optimization, monitoring, security, and operational excellence
- Conducting architecture reviews, technical deep dives, design sessions, and technical assessments to guide engineering decisions and solution direction
- Mentoring and coaching senior and mid-level engineers while helping grow future Staff and Principal engineers through technical guidance and leadership development