Senior Software Engineer, Motion Planning

Kodiak Robotics, Inc. was founded in 2018 and has become a leader in autonomous ground transportation committed to a safer and more efficient future for all. The company has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) powered technology stack purpose-built for commercial trucking and the public sector. The company delivers freight daily for its customers across the southern United States using its autonomous technology. In 2024, Kodiak became the first known company to publicly announce delivering a driverless semi-truck to a customer. Kodiak is also leveraging its commercial self-driving software to develop, test and deploy autonomous capabilities for the U.S. Department of Defense.

We are looking for an experienced Software Engineer to join our Behavior & Motion Planning team and lead the development of core planning capabilities that directly shape how the Kodiak Driver behaves on the road.

This is a senior technical role for engineers who thrive on ambiguous, high-leverage problems at the intersection of robotics, optimization, and real-time systems. You will own complex planning challenges end-to-end: framing the problem, aligning stakeholders, designing the technical approach, driving implementation, and validating on-road impact. Your work will influence not only individual algorithms, but also the architecture, interfaces, and evaluation strategies that enable the planning stack to scale.

You will work across Planning, Perception, Simulation, Systems, and related teams to create cross-functional solutions to some of the hardest problems in autonomous trucking. You should be excited to combine deep technical judgment with hands-on execution, using data from real-world operation to improve safety, driving quality, and system performance.

In this role, you will

• Lead the design and deployment of behavior and motion-planning capabilities for complex real-world driving scenarios
• Own ambiguous technical problems from concept through production rollout and iterative refinement
• Shape the architecture, interfaces, and requirements across planning-related systems
• Translate high-level driving goals into robust algorithms, cost functions, and performance-critical production code
• Drive improvements in planning quality, prediction integration, latency, and overall system reliability
• Build and influence evaluation frameworks, tooling, and workflows that turn real-world logs into measurable autonomy improvements
• Provide technical leadership across cross-functional efforts and raise engineering quality through strong design and code reviews
• Mentor other engineers and help guide technical direction within the team

What you’ll bring

• Deep background in robotics, motion planning, optimization, controls, or related fields
• MS, PhD, or equivalent experience in a technically rigorous domain
• 6+ years of experience building production so