Senior Robotics Planning Engineer

Company: Confidential - Well-funded physical-AI company
Location: San Francisco, CA (SoMa office, 5 days per week)
Compensation: $176,000 - $240,000 + equity + bonus
Employment Type: Full-time
Visa Sponsorship: Visa transfers and new sponsorship (H-1B, TN)

About the Company

A well-funded physical-AI company bringing autonomy and robotics to heavy industries, with a mining division that runs a large fleet of autonomous haul trucks in live production across several countries.

The Role

The company (formerly the company) is hiring a Senior Robotics Planning Engineer (5+ years) to build the high-level autonomy systems that coordinate fleets of 200+ ton autonomous haul trucks at mines in the US, Scotland, Saudi Arabia and Brazil. You will make sure trucks navigate smoothly without unnecessary stops and design the path planning and multi-vehicle coordination that directly drive site productivity and safety. You will be one of the first members of a growing planning team, touching motion, coordination and fleet planning from the ground up on real, deployed systems rather than simulations.

What You Will Do

• Develop trajectory and path planning for 200+ ton autonomous haul trucks, minimizing stops caused by unplanned obstacles.
• Design intersection management that computes optimal truck sequences to minimize total wait time.
• Build coordination planning that manages multiple vehicles with intersecting trajectories, preventing deadlocks and collisions.
• Create fleet planning algorithms that turn site-wide state (loading and dumping locations) into managed assignments for each truck.
• Validate planning concepts with controls and systems engineers during live deployments.

What You Bring

• 5-10 years in robotics motion planning engineering using Python and C++
• Built path planning or trajectory optimization for robots or autonomous vehicles that runs in production
• Strong motion planning fundamentals (including non-holonomic planning)
• Proficiency in Python and NumPy for numerical computing
• BS/MS/PhD in robotics, computer science or a related field
• Comfort with ambiguity and building processes from scratch; schedule flexibility during deployments
• Ability to work on-site in San Francisco 5 days a week (relocation OK)

Nice to Have

• Multi-agent coordination or fleet planning systems
• Experience at robotics/AV companies (e.g. Waymo, Aurora, Zoox, Nuro)
• Master's or PhD in robotics or motion planning
• Computational geometry (Shapely, collision detection)

Interview Process

Recruiter screen (30 min), hiring manager screen (30 min), technical screen (1 hour), onsite (1 hour), final interview (30 min).

Tech Stack

Python, NumPy, C++, Shapely, Numba, SciPy, Redis, ZeroMQ, Linux