Mission Summary:
The Safety-Layer Team is responsible for ensuring the Motional Autonomous Vehicle executes appropriate dynamic trajectories in both nominal and safety-critical scenarios. This team focuses on refining upstream motion plans to guarantee compliance with safety-driven requirements, executing highly dynamic evasive maneuvers at the AV’s physical limits, and implementing system-wide safety overrides. The team pursues these goals through a process of rigorous algorithmic design, implementation, validation, analysis in simulation, and comprehensive closed-course and public road evaluation.
As the team's responsibilities are growing to support more complex scenarios and the scaling of Motional’s deployment area, we are looking for a Senior Motion Planning - Safety-Layer to help build a robust motion planning safety-layer. You will work on enabling cutting-edge capabilities for Motional’s AV, including algorithm design and documentation, software development, metrics definition, simulation implementation and evaluation, and in-vehicle testing. As part of this role, you will maintain cross-functional relationships across the organization to help understand and communicate the impacts of their work on overall AV performance.
What you will work on:
- Design, implement, and test algorithms for synthesizing trajectories and selecting trajectories across asynchronous generation sources to ensure AV behaviors adhere to safety-critical requirement specifications.
- Develop evasive maneuver planning algorithms in conjunction with low-level control systems to safely use the full actuation capacity of Motional’s AV for collision avoidance.
- Evaluate the role of multiple perception sensor modalities in refining the safety-layer’s identification of safety-critical scenarios.
- Construct test/analysis tooling for isolated and system-level evaluation of safety-layer components and processes, select test parameters, and analyze test results.
- Utilize, validate, and improve dynamic simulation environments to accelerate the design and analysis of safety-critical motion planning algorithms, including validating simulation models against real-world data.
- Define and implement performance, comfort, and safety metrics for motion planning and safety systems, and perform quantitative analysis of fleet-wide vehicle data to validate design improvements and identify key areas of improvement.
- Build a system-wide understanding of Motional’s autonomy stack components by supporting root-cause analysis of simulation, closed-course, and public road events from a motion planning and safety perspective.
- Travel for in-person vehicle testing at Motional’s and our partner's deployment and test track locations, typically once every 4 to 6 months.
Desired Background:
- MS, PhD preferred, in one of Control Theory / Robotics / Computer Science / Applied Math or a related field
- 3+ years of experience developing motion planning and collision avoidance related algorithms and components in an industrial setting, preferably the AV industry
- Strong background in modern C++ programming (C++17, C++20), with an emphasis on developing high-performance and reliable systems
- Experienced with concepts from motion planning including trajectory generation through numerical optimization and sampling-based approaches, cost and heuristic-based methods for trajectory selection, multi-modal prediction models, geometric and physics-based collision detection, time-series data processing, and data visualization
- Familiarity with dynamic collision modeling, convex set processing, state machine logic, and multi-rate decision-making processes
- Familiarity with agentic-based development tooling
- Familiarity with Linux-based operating systems
Bonus Points:
- General familiarity with machine learning, including supervised learning, reinforcement learning, training/test validation, etc.
- Familiarity with vehicle dynamics modeling, including standard longitudinal/lateral vehicle dynamics models
- Publications in Robotics/Controls or Autonomous Driving conferences/journals (IROS, ICRA, CoRL, RAL, TRO, CDC, ACC, TAC, CSL, Automatica, IV, ITSC, T-ITS)
- Familiarity with SQL-based queries
- Familiarity with Python
- Familiarity with Gitlab, Bazel, VSCode / CLion
- Familiarity with AV industry simulation tooling
#LI-BP1
The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a wide range of compensation factors including but not limited to specific skills, experience and expertise, role location, certifications, licenses, and business needs. The estimated compensation range listed in this job posting reflects base salary only. This role may include additional forms of compensation such as a bonus or company equity. The recruiter assigned to this role can share more information about the specific compensation and benefit details associated with this role during the hiring process.
Candidates for certain positions are eligible to participate in Motional’s benefits program. Motional’s benefits include but are not limited to medical, dental, vision, 401k with a company match, health saving accounts, life insurance, pet insurance, and more.
Motional is a driverless technology company making autonomous vehicles a safe, reliable, and accessible reality. We’re driven by something more.
Our journey is always people first.
We aren't just developing driverless cars; we're creating safer roadways, more equitable transportation options, and making our communities better places to live, work, and connect. Our team is made up of engineers, researchers, innovators, dreamers and doers, who are creating a technology with the potential to transform the way we move.
Higher purpose, greater impact.
We’re creating first-of-its-kind technology that will transform transportation. To do so successfully, we must design for everyone in our cities and on our roads. We believe in building a great place to work through a progressive, global culture that is diverse, inclusive, and ensures people feel valued at every level of the organization. Diversity helps us to see the world differently; it’s not only good for our business, it’s the right thing to do.
Scale up, not starting up.
Our team is behind some of the industry's largest leaps forward, including the first fully-autonomous cross-country drive in the U.S, the launch of the world's first robotaxi pilot, and operation of the world's longest-standing public robotaxi fleet. We’re driven to scale; we’re moving towards commercialization of our technology, and we need team members who are ready to embrace change and challenges.
Formed as a joint venture between Hyundai Motor Group and Aptiv, Motional is fundamentally changing how people move through their lives. Headquartered in Boston, Motional has operations in the U.S and Asia. For more information, visit www.Motional.com and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube.
Motional AD Inc. is an EOE. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. To comply with Federal Law, we participate in E-Verify. All newly-hired employees are queried through this electronic system established by the DHS and the SSA to verify their identity and employment eligibility.
Skills Required
- MS or PhD in Control Theory, Robotics, Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, or a related field
- 3+ years of industrial experience developing motion planning and collision avoidance algorithms and components
- Strong proficiency in modern C++ programming, including C++17 and C++20
- Experience with trajectory generation using numerical optimization and sampling-based approaches
- Experience with cost- and heuristic-based trajectory selection
- Experience with multi-modal prediction models
- Experience with geometric and physics-based collision detection
- Experience with time-series data processing and data visualization
- Familiarity with dynamic collision modeling, convex set processing, state machine logic, and multi-rate decision-making
- Familiarity with agentic-based development tooling
- Familiarity with Linux-based operating systems
- Familiarity with machine learning, including supervised learning, reinforcement learning, and training/test validation
- Familiarity with vehicle dynamics modeling, including longitudinal and lateral vehicle dynamics
- Publications in robotics, controls, or autonomous driving conferences or journals
- Familiarity with SQL-based queries
- Familiarity with Python
- Familiarity with GitLab, Bazel, VS Code, or CLion
- Familiarity with autonomous vehicle industry simulation tooling
Motional Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Motional and has not been reviewed or approved by Motional.
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Healthcare Strength — Multiple medical plan options (HDHP and PPO) with dental and vision, plus complimentary mental‑health counseling through Modern Health and 24/7 EAP support, point to comprehensive coverage administered via Aetna. Health choices are generally characterized as solid and comparable to larger tech peers, with typical plan tradeoffs.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Flexible PTO, paid holidays, and a company‑wide shutdown between Christmas and New Year’s indicate generous time‑off policies. The ability to work outside one’s home country for up to 60 days per year adds flexibility, though practical use can depend on team norms.
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Retirement Support — A 401(k) with company matching alongside employer‑paid life, AD&D, and disability coverage provides strong baseline financial security. Additional protections and conveniences such as identity‑theft coverage and commuter/travel support complement the core retirement benefit.
Motional Insights
What We Do
Our team is commercializing a world-class driverless system. The Motional team is behind some of the industry’s largest leaps forward in the last decade, including the first fully-autonomous cross-country drive in the U.S, the launch of the world’s first robotaxi pilot, and operation of the world’s most-established public robotaxi fleet. Strategically formed by Hyundai Motor Group, one of the world’s largest vehicle manufacturers offering smart mobility solutions, and Aptiv, a global technology leader in advanced safety, electrification, and vehicle connectivity, Motional is fundamentally changing how people move through their lives.
Why Work With Us
Our leadership team has been working in this industry for decades and includes renown early innovators in driverless technology. We are creating a future where transportation is safe, reliable, and accessible. Join our team in revolutionizing the industry that will change how the world moves.
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