Manager, Motion Planning
Zoox
Administration
Foster City, CA, USA
Posted on Aug 11, 2025
The Planner Interactions team is responsible for developing driving behaviors of the mobile robot, balancing safety, comfort, and progress. Planner Interactions emphasizes computationally efficient, simple, principled, and scalable approaches. The team handles their interactions with each other and other parts of the autonomy stack. We are looking for an experienced manager who is passionate about the exciting challenges involved in motion planning and decision making.
In this role, you will:
- You will lead the team of engineers on Planner Interactions, leveraging technical and managerial skills to deliver high-impact results
- You will set the short and long term technical direction for the team and collaborate on the broader company-wide directions
- You will collaborate with the team members in technical design considerations, implementation, and on-vehicle testing
- You will coordinate cross-functional initiatives with other teams across Motion Planning, Prediction, Perception, and CAS
- You will grow the team through hiring and guide the continued professional development of team members
Qualifications
- Master’s or PhD in computer science, robotics, or a related field
- 7+ years of hands-on experience developing complex robotic systems or relevant software
- Fluency in C / C++
- Excellent communication and problem-solving skills
- Prior engineering management experience with complex robotic systems
- Extensive experience architecting and implementing motion planning algorithms
Bonus Qualifications
- Experience with autonomous vehicles
- Experience with reinforcement learning on physical systems
- Familiarity in all or some of: trajectory optimization, search-based planning, Integration of prediction and planning, costs, risk assessment, multi-objective formulations