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 software, including substantial experience in C++
• Proven track record of owning and delivering complex technical projects with real-world impact
• Strong systems thinking and the ability to work effectively across software boundaries and organizational interfaces
• Excellent technical judgment, communication, and collaboration skills
• Ability to balance long-term design quality with fast, pragmatic iteration in a production environment

Bonus points if you have

• Experience shipping autonomy or robotics software on real vehicles or robotic platforms
• Strong knowledge of motion planning, trajectory optimization, prediction, optimal control, or related areas in the autonomous systems
• Experience working on real-time, performance-critical systems
• Experience building evaluation, debugging, and data-analysis tools for autonomy or robotics stacks
• Track record of mentoring engineers and leading technical direction across projects

What we offer:

• Competitive compensation package including equity and annual bonuses
• Excellent Medical, Dental, and Vision plans through Kaiser Permanente, Cigna, and  MetLife (including a medical plan with infertility benefits)
• MetLife Legal Services, Identity & Fraud Protection, Hospital Indemnity Insurance, Accident Insurance, & Critical Illness Insurance
• Flexible PTO, 10 paid holidays, and generous parental leave policies
• Our office is centrally located in Mountain View, CA
• Office perks: dog-friendly, free catered lunch, a fully stocked kitchen, and free EV charging
• Long Term Disability, Short Term Disability, Life Insurance
• Wellbeing Benefits - Headspace through Cigna, Calm through Kaiser, One Medical, Gympass, Spring Health through Cigna, Rula (mental health navigation) 
• Fidelity 401(k)
• Commuter, FSA, Dependent Care FSA, HSA
• Various incentive programs (referral bonuses, patent bonuses, etc.)

We are looking for a Software Engineer with deep expertise in computational geometry to join our Motion Planning team. In this role, you’ll design and implement the geometric foundations that power mission-critical systems across our stack. You’ll be building a high-performance geometry library that is robust, mathematically rigorous, and optimized for modern hardware, enabling advanced applications in autonomy, simulation, and beyond.

What you’ll do:

• Build the core library: Design, implement, and maintain a library of computational geometry algorithms in modern C++.
• Develop primitives: Create and optimize fundamental operations, such as distances, intersections, projections, polygon operations, and convex hulls, for complex geometries.
• Maximize performance: Profile and optimize code for CPU architectures (especially x86), leveraging cache-efficient data layouts, and instruction-level parallelism.
• Ensure reliability: Establish a testing framework to guarantee numerical stability, robustness, and correctness at scale.
• Enable visibility: Develop tools for visualizing, debugging, and validating geometric computations.
• Collaborate & integrate: Partner with other engineering teams to design clean APIs and integrate the geometry library into larger systems.
• Innovate: Research and apply state-of-the-art methods from academia and industry to tackle novel geometric challenges.

What you’ll bring:

• Strong background in computational geometry, linear algebra, and applied mathematics (MS, PhD, or equivalent experience).
• 4+ years of software engineering experience, including meaningful experience in production C++.
• Deep grasp of CPU/GPU architecture, cache/memory layouts, SIMD, and parallel algorithms.
• A rigorous, test-driven mindset with high standards for software quality and mathematical correctness.
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills, able to work across teams and explain complex ideas clearly.
• Hands-on, proactive approach to problem-solving and performance tuning.

Bonus Points:

• GPU programming experience with CUDA or OpenCL.
• Experience with motion planning, trajectory optimization, prediction, or controls for autonomous systems.
• Proficiency in Python or TypeScript for prototyping, tooling, or bindings.
• Familiarity with SIMD instruction sets (AVX, SSE).
• Experience with libraries like Clipper or Boost.Geometry.
• Robotics/AV background (planning, mapping, SLAM, 3D graphics/CAD/physics sim).

What we offer:

• Competitive compensation package including equity and annual bonuses
• Excellent Medical, Dental, and Vision plans through Kaiser Permanente, Cigna, and  MetLife (including a medical plan with infertility benefits)
• MetLife Legal Services, Identity & Fraud Protection, Hospital Indemnity Insurance, Accident Insurance, & Critical Illness Insurance
• Flexible PTO, 10 paid holidays, and generous parental leave policies
• Our office is centrally located in Mountain View, CA
• Office perks: dog-friendly, free catered lunch, a fully stocked kitchen, and free EV charging
• Long Term Disability, Short Term Disability, Life Insurance
• Wellbeing Benefits - Headspace through Cigna, Calm through Kaiser, One Medical, Gympass, Spring Health through Cigna, Rula (mental health navigation) 
• Fidelity 401(k)
• Commuter, FSA, Dependent Care FSA, HSA
• Various incentive programs (referral bonuses, patent bonuses, etc.)

Kodiak is recruiting a Staff Software Engineer to join our Planning team and advance the Kodiak Driver’s ability to safely and gracefully handle complex real-world driving scenarios.

In this role, you will:

• Design and develop motion planning and prediction systems for driverless operation on public roads
• Develop the architecture and long-term roadmap for planning and prediction
• Mentor and provide technical leadership to junior and senior engineers, raising the bar for engineering excellence across the engineering organization
• Integrate engineered driving logic and machine-learning models
• Develop robust models to predict the behavior of other actors, improving both safety and driving performance
• Partner cross-functionally with Perception, Controls, Systems, and Simulation teams to define interfaces, requirements, and system behavior
• Solve difficult real-world problems involving lane changing, merging, speed modulation, mission updates, multi-trajectory prediction, and more!

What you’ll bring:

• 6+ years of experience developing production-level robotics software
• Strong facility with modern C++
• Expertise in motion planning, trajectory optimization, graph theory, and related domains
• Delivery of complex autonomous systems
• Leadership through ambiguous, unsolved challenges

Bonus points if you have:

• Experience deploying software on driverless autonomous vehicles
• Experience improving system performance (latency, throughput, reliability) in production environments
• Familiarity with simulation frameworks and data-driven development workflows
• A track record of mentoring engineers

What we offer:

• Competitive compensation package including equity and annual bonuses
• Excellent Medical, Dental, and Vision plans through Kaiser Permanente, Cigna, and  MetLife (including a medical plan with infertility benefits)
• MetLife Legal Services, Identity & Fraud Protection, Hospital Indemnity Insurance, Accident Insurance, & Critical Illness Insurance
• Flexible PTO, 10 paid holidays, and generous parental leave policies
• Our office is centrally located in Mountain View, CA
• Office perks: dog-friendly, free catered lunch, a fully stocked kitchen, and free EV charging
• Long Term Disability, Short Term Disability, Life Insurance
• Wellbeing Benefits - Headspace through Cigna, Calm through Kaiser, One Medical, Gympass, Spring Health through Cigna, Rula (mental health navigation) 
• Fidelity 401(k)
• Commuter, FSA, Dependent Care FSA, HSA
• Various incentive programs (referral bonuses, patent bonuses, etc.)

We are looking for an experienced Controls Software Engineer who is passionate about safety-critical systems to join our Motion Planning & Controls team.

In this role, you will:

• Be responsible for designing and implementing our feedback, control, and actuation strategies using both established & novel techniques
• Architect, develop, and test reliable, redundant, and safety-critical software that controls fully-loaded trucks driving on the road
• Characterize the vehicle platform (e.g., steering, braking, throttle/engine management, dynamics) to develop models that can be used for precise motion planning, simulation, and controls
• Work on fundamental problems in redundant actuation, degraded operation, and fail-safe control
• Collaborate with other teams at Kodiak (e.g. hardware, motion planning, and systems engineering) to deliver a robust vehicle control architecture (for example: requirement specifications, test plans, test documentation, and implemented testing at all levels of integration)

What you’ll bring:

• A strong background in robotics, controls, optimization, and mathematics (MS, PhD, or equivalent experience)
• Developed, tested, and tuned controllers for mobile autonomous robots, ideally trucks, cars, or flying vehicles
• Performed system identification, modeling, simulation, or other characterization for systems with complex dynamics
• A strong theoretical foundation paired with practical experience in controls, system modeling, and/or redundant architectures
• A focus on end-to-end vehicle safety
• Software development experience writing production-level C or C++

Bonus points if you have:

• Experience with software design and implementation in safety-critical domains (e.g. automotive, aerospace, medical, etc)
• Written low-level drivers for software/hardware interfacing using protocols such as CAN or ethernet
• Written efficient code running on resource-constrained embedded systems with a real-time operating system
• Experience with formal verification methods, writing requirements, and systems engineering processes
• Comfortable with Python, Matlab/Simulink, or other simulation/analysis tools used in feedback system design

What we offer:

• Competitive compensation package including equity and annual bonuses
• Excellent Medical, Dental, and Vision plans through Kaiser Permanente, Cigna, and  MetLife (including a medical plan with infertility benefits)
• MetLife Legal Services, Identity & Fraud Protection, Hospital Indemnity Insurance, Accident Insurance, & Critical Illness Insurance
• Flexible PTO, 10 paid holidays, and generous parental leave policies
• Our office is centrally located in Mountain View, CA
• Office perks: dog-friendly, free catered lunch, a fully stocked kitchen, and free EV charging
• Long Term Disability, Short Term Disability, Life Insurance
• Wellbeing Benefits - Headspace through Cigna, Calm through Kaiser, One Medical, Gympass, Spring Health through Cigna, Rula (mental health navigation) 
• Fidelity 401(k)
• Commuter, FSA, Dependent Care FSA, HSA
• Various incentive programs (referral bonuses, patent bonuses, etc.)