Staff Software Engineer, Learned & Hybrid Behavior Planning
Kodiak AI, Inc. · Mountain View, CA ·
- Seniority
- Staff
- Category
- Software engineering
You will integrate learned models into the behavior-planning stack and work with machine-learning partners on model requirements, evaluation, and deployment. You will design hybrid planning strategies, define validation and safety criteria, analyze model behavior, lead technical designs, and mentor engineers.
Responsibilities
- Lead planning-side integration of learned models into behavior planning
- Collaborate on model improvements, requirements, evaluation, and deployment
- Develop learned planning components and ML-driven planning signals
- Design strategies that balance learned components with heuristic planning systems
- Define validation, fallback, monitoring, and safety criteria
- Debug and analyze model behavior using simulation, logs, metrics, and autonomy data
- Lead technical designs and mentor engineers
Requirements
- Experience in autonomous vehicles, robotics, or a related autonomy domain
- Technical background in behavior planning, decision-making, or motion planning
- C++ proficiency
- Experience with heuristic or classical planning systems
- Experience integrating or developing learned behavior policies, behavior classification, trajectory prediction, or actor-intent models
- Ability to reason about safety, system behavior, evaluation, and deployment risk
- Cross-functional communication and technical leadership