Software Engineer - Motion Planning (Fallback Stack

Motion Planning Engineer

Applied Intuition, Inc. is powering the future of physical AI. Founded in 2017 and now valued at $15 billion, the Silicon Valley company is creating the digital infrastructure needed to bring intelligence to every moving machine on the planet. Applied Intuition services the automotive, defense, trucking, construction, mining and agriculture industries in three core areas: tools and infrastructure, operating systems, and autonomy.

Eighteen of the top 20 global automakers, as well as the United States military and its allies, trust the company's solutions to deliver physical intelligence. Applied Intuition is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with offices in Washington, D.C.;
San Diego;
Ft. Walton Beach, Florida;
Ann Arbor, Michigan;
London;
Stuttgart;
Munich;
Stockholm;
Bangalore;
Seoul; and Tokyo.

We are an in-office company, and our expectation is that employees primarily work from their Applied Intuition office 5 days a week. However, we also recognize the importance of flexibility and trust our employees to manage their schedules responsibly. This may include occasional remote work, starting the day with morning meetings from home before heading to the office, or leaving earlier when needed to accommodate family commitments.

As a Motion Planning Engineer on the Fallback Stack team, you will design and ship deterministic, safety-critical planning systems that ensure autonomous vehicles behave safely when autonomy degrades or operates under uncertainty. This role emphasizes classical motion planning, predictable behavior, and large-scale evaluation, rather than deep learning–driven planning.

In addition to your engineering contributions, by working in our dynamic and customer-focused team culture, you will contribute to and learn from best practices in the nascent autonomy industry. We move fast and we focus on excellence, for our products and for our business. If you are hands-on and looking for a place to have a multiplying effect on making autonomous systems a reality, Applied is the place for you!

• Design and implement classical or ML motion planners for fallback and minimal-risk maneuvers

• Build planners that operate reliably under degraded perception, partial observability, and system faults Define and execute safe, deterministic vehicle motions such as controlled slow-downs, pull-overs, and safe stops

• Use large-scale simulation and real-world data to evaluate planner behavior and guide parameter tuning Develop metrics, analysis tools, and dashboards to understand planner performance at scale

• Collaborate closely with behavior prediction, perception, controls, safety, and remote assistance teams

• Contribute to a reusable fallback platform used across trucking and other autonomy programs

• 5+ years of experience in motion planning for autonomous vehicles or robotics

• Strong foundation in robotic motion planning algorithms and trajectory generation (optimization-, search-, or rule-based)

• Experience building deterministic, safety-critical planning systems

• A data-driven mindset for large-scale evaluation, debugging, and tuning of planning behavior

• Proficiency in C++ and experience working in real-time systems

• Strong systems thinking and cross-functional collaboration skills

• Experience designing minimal-risk maneuvers (MRM) or emergency handling behaviors

• Familiarity with AV safety concepts, ODD constraints, or safety-case-driven development

• Experience using ML techniques for parameter tuning, calibration, or offline optimization

• Experience working with degraded sensors, uncertainty, or human-in-the-loop systems Background in simulation frameworks or large-scale log analysis

Compensation at Applied Intuition for eligible roles includes base salary, equity, and benefits. Base salary is a single component of the total compensation package, which may also include equity in the form of options and/or restricted stock units, comprehensive health, dental, vision, life and disability insurance coverage, 401k retirement benefits with employer match, learning and wellness stipends, and paid time off.

N…