Staff, Software Engineer - Motion Planning

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

• Define and maintain the architectural vision across teams, platforms, and services to ensure scalability, reliability, maintainability, long-term technical alignment, and consistency of software design patterns.
• Support Engineering Managers and Senior ICs in resolving complex technical design, architecture, and implementation challenges across multiple domains while balancing feasibility against business objectives.
• Establish and promote engineering best practices for code quality, automated testing, performance optimization, monitoring, security, and operational excellence.
• Conduct architecture reviews, technical deep dives, design sessions, and technical assessments to guide engineering decisions and solution direction.
• Mentor and coach senior and mid-level engineers while helping grow future Staff and Principal engineers through technical guidance and leadership development.
• Foster a culture of engineering excellence, documentation, collaboration, innovation, and knowledge sharing across the organization.
• Lead major technical initiatives such as platform modernization, observability enhancements, performance optimization, scalability improvements, and reliability engineering efforts.

Technical Leadership

• Provide technical leadership across teams and platforms, driving architectural strategy, engineering excellence, and scalable system design.
• Translate complex technical concepts, trade-offs, and architectural decisions into clear recommendations for leadership and cross-functional stakeholders.

Software Development

• Design, develop, and optimize motion planning algorithms including trajectory generation, trajectory selection, behavior planning, and optimization-based planning approaches for autonomous trucks.
• Develop planning solutions leveraging techniques such as graph search, sampling-based planning, optimization-based planning, spline/B-spline trajectories, convex optimization, and Frenet-frame approaches.
• Incorporate vehicle kinematic and dynamic constraints into planning systems to ensure safe, feasible, and comfortable vehicle behavior.
• Develop production-quality software using modern C++ within a Linux environment while adhering to quality, safety, testing, and deployment best practices.
• Collaborate closely with Safety, Controls, Perception, Validation, and Simulation teams to develop safe and reliable autonomous driving behaviors.

Testing, Integration, and Metrics

• Develop and execute validation strategies across Software-in-the-Loop (SiL), Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL), and Vehicle-in-the-Loop (ViL) environments.
• Investigate and debug vehicle behavior by reproducing issues in simulation, analyzing system performance, and implementing software improvements.
• Support vehicle integration, deployment activities, and post-deployment investigations to ensure reliable autonomy performance.
• Perform on-vehicle troubleshooting using real-time diagnostic tools and in-depth log analysis.

What You'll Need to Succeed

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related technical field with: 10+ years of industry experience OR Master's degree with 7+ years of experience OR PhD with 5+ years of experience.
• Proven experience operating as a Staff, Principal, or multi-team technical leader within complex engineering organizations including experience leading large cross-functional technical initiatives across multiple engineering teams.
• Deep expertise developing robotics, autonomous vehicle, ADAS, or other complex real-time software systems.
• Deep expertise in modern C++ development within Linux-based environments.
• Diverse experience developing motion planning, trajectory generation, trajectory optimization, behavior planning, or decision-making systems for robotics or autonomous systems.
• Strong understanding of vehicle dynamics, vehicle kinematics, trajectory feasibility, and planning system architecture.
• Strong foundation in linear algebra, numerical optimization, geometry, and robotics algorithms.
• Hands-on experience with analyzing metrics to optimize performance in a resource-constrained environment.
• Excellent troubleshooting skills with the ability to perform both real-time diagnostics and in-depth post-analysis.
• Mastery of software engineering fundamentals, system design principles, and scalable development practices.
• Experience with version control (Git), build systems, and package management.
• Understanding of test automation principles and proficiency with unit testing and test automation frameworks (pytest, Robot Framework, gtest, etc.).
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to debug complex system-level issues.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills within cross-functional engineering teams.
• Ability to work independently while contributing effectively within a highly collaborative environment.

Bonus Points!

• Experience with Model Predictive Path Integral (MPPI), Model Predictive Control (MPC), convex optimization, quadratic programming (QP), nonlinear optimization, or other optimization-based planning techniques for autonomous vehicles.
• 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.
• Experience with 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.