Staff Software Engineer, Behavior 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.

of Defense.

We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to help build and improve behavior planning and motion planning systems for autonomous driving.

In this role, you will own planning features end to end, from design and implementation through validation, deployment, and analysis.

You will work on real-world autonomy behavior and help the system make safe, comfortable, and effective decisions in complex driving scenarios.

This role is ideal for someone with strong planning experience who enjoys building production-quality autonomy software and collaborating across the autonomy stack

In this role, you will

• 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.

What you’ll bring