Senior/ Staff Software Engineer, Motion Planning

• Design, implement, and optimize the motion planning stack for autonomous vehicles, enabling safe, comfortable, and efficient driving in diverse real-world environments.
• Develop lattice-based planners, sampling-based planners, and optimization-based methods for generating dynamically feasible, collision-free trajectories.
• Integrate constraints from perception, prediction, and control to generate context-aware motion plans under uncertainty.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with behavior planning, control, and mapping teams to ensure robust and consistent planning behavior.
• Optimize and maintain C++-based infrastructure for trajectory generation, evaluation, and deployment in real-time onboard systems.
• Analyze closed-loop simulation and on-road performance; identify and resolve failure cases involving traffic interactions, occlusions, or dynamic obstacles.

• Ph.D. with 3+ years or Master’s with 5+ years of experience in robotics, motion planning, or autonomous systems.
• Deep expertise in at least two of the following: lattice-based planning, trajectory optimization, model predictive control, or search-based planning.
• Strong proficiency in C++, with experience in production-quality code for real-time or safety-critical systems.
• Solid understanding of vehicle dynamics, control interfaces, and motion feasibility constraints.
• Experience with simulation tools and debugging motion planner behavior in realistic driving environments.
• Knowledge of diffusion models and/or Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models is a strong plus.
• Excellent analytical and system-level debugging skills; strong communication and cross-functional collaboration capabilities.

Salary Range - $180,000- $260,000

More about Gatik

Founded in 2017 by experts in autonomous vehicle technology, Gatik has rapidly expanded its presence to Mountain View, Dallas-Fort Worth, Arkansas, and Toronto. As the first and only company to achieve fully driverless middle-mile commercial deliveries, Gatik holds a unique and defensible position in the AV industry, with a clear trajectory toward sustainable growth and profitability.

We have delivered complete, proprietary AV technology - an integration of software and hardware - to enable earlier successes for our clients in constrained Level 4 autonomy.  By choosing the middle mile – with defined point-to-point delivery, we have simplified some of the more complex AV challenges, enabling us to achieve full autonomy ahead of competitors. Given extensive knowledge of Gatik’s well-defined, fixed route ODDs and hybrid architecture, we are able to hyper-optimize our models with exponentially less data, establish gate-keeping mechanisms to maintain explainability, and ensure continued safety of the system for unmanned operations.

Visit us at Gatik for more company information and Careers at Gatik for more open roles.

Notable News

• Forbes: Forget robotaxis. Upstart Gatik sees middle-mile deliveries as the path to profitable AVs
• Tech Brew: Gatik AI exec unpacks the regulations that could shape the AV industry
• Business Wire: Gatik Paves the Way for Safe Driverless Operations (‘Freight-Only’) at Scale with Industry-First Third-Party Safety Assessment Framework
• Auto Futures: Autonomous Trucking Group Gatik Secures Investment From NIPPON EXPRESS HOLDINGS
• Automotive News: Gatik foresees hundreds of self-driving trucks on road soon, and that's just the beginning
• Forbes: Isuzu And Gatik Go All In To Scale Up Driverless Freight Services
• Bloomberg: Autonomous Vehicle Startup Takes Off by Picking Off Easier Routes
• Reuters: Driverless vehicles on limited routes bump along despite US robotaxi scrutiny

Taking care of our team

At Gatik, we connect people of extraordinary talent and experience to an opportunity to create a more resilient supply chain and contribute to our environment’s sustainability. We are diverse in our backgrounds and perspectives yet united by a bold vision and shared commitment to our values. Our culture emphasizes the importance of collaboration, respect and agility.

We at Gatik strive to create a diverse and inclusive environment where everyone feels they have opportunities to succeed and grow because we know that together we can do great things. We are committed to an inclusive and diverse team. We do not discriminate based on race, color, ethnicity, ancestry, national origin, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, veteran status, genetic information, marital status or any legally protected status.