Senior Robotics Engineer - Motion Planning; m​/f​/d

About Us

driveblocks develops off‑road ground autonomy that works under harsh and challenging conditions. We build systems designed for operation in 3D terrain, vegetation, and heavy dust and dirt, where 100% reliability is core to success, even in GNSS‑denied environments. Working with multiple OEM partners across agriculture, construction, and defense, our focus is to deliver value to vehicle operators and solve the toughest challenges when deploying Physical AI in real world applications.

Every deployment helps us to gather the operational data required to build the next generation of reliable and safe autonomous driving systems. From our office in Munich, we operate as a focused, highly ambitious team with deep expertise in autonomy, Physical AI, and embedded software engineering. We move quickly and set high standards. If you want to build autonomy that is deployed, tested, and operated in the field – we’d love to hear from you!

• Ownership of your work – Take responsibility for the full value chain
• Competitive Compensation & Benefits
• Participate in driveblocks’ success via a Virtual Stock Option Plan
• Flexible working hours

We are seeking a Senior Robotics Engineer – Motion Planning to strengthen and scale the decision‑making capabilities of our autonomous off‑road software platform. This is a hands‑on, system‑critical engineering role with ownership over how our system interprets the driveblocks environment model and acts on it safely and reliably in challenging off‑road conditions. You will work closely with engineering and customer deployment teams to adapt and extend our planning and navigation stack – evolving toward more customized solutions tailored to driveblocks’ needs.

Beyond implementation, you will contribute to conceptual system design, helping shape how the execution part of our software should evolve as we scale across vehicle platforms and industries.

• Adapt, configure, and extend the driveblocks navigation stack for real‑world deployments in challenging off‑road environments
• Develop custom planning components (planners, controllers, cost functions, behaviors) as system requirements evolve
• Design and implement robust motion planning pipelines under real‑world constraints
• Contribute to ego state estimation (sensor fusion, localization robustness) and its integration with planning
• Reason about complex environmental representations and translate them into safe, efficient robot behavior
• Identify and address failure modes in planning and localization, improving system robustness and safety
• Collaborate closely with platform software and customer deployment teams to ensure performance targets
• Contribute to architectural decisions around planning, state estimation, and system integration

• Master’s, PhD, or 3+ years of experience in robotics, autonomous systems, or related domains
• Strong hands‑on experience with C++ and system‑level software development
• Experience with motion planning systems (e.g. ROS2 Nav2, sampling‑based / optimization‑based approaches)
• Practical experience working on real robotic systems (beyond simulation)
• Solid understanding of robot kinematics, control, and planning constraints
• Experience debugging complex system behavior across multiple interacting components
• Strong system‑level thinking and ability to execute feature development in a fast‑paced environment
• Familiarity with state estimation / sensor fusion (e.g. EKF, UKF, or similar approaches)
• Experience with localization systems (GNSS, LiDAR‑based, or multi‑sensor setups)