Staff ML Engineer, Autonomy & Planning

3 months ago

Sunnyvale, CA, USAStaff+

Base Salary

$240k - $275k/yr

Responsibilities

Advance machine learning and AI capabilities for embodied autonomy across computer vision, learned planning, open-world generalization, and real-time decision-making.
Integrate large vision-language-action models to improve robot reasoning, situational understanding, and explainability in safety-critical environments.
Own the intelligence-to-action loop from sensor observations and entity reasoning through world-state modeling and policy decisions.
Build a closed-loop learning pipeline in which production outcomes and operator feedback support model evaluation and policy improvement within safety boundaries.
Drive technical architecture decisions across the autonomy stack and mentor engineers across the team.

7+ years shipping autonomy, planning, or decision-making systems to production in robotics, autonomous vehicles, or safety-critical platforms.
Deep expertise in behavior planning and policy execution, imitation learning or reinforcement learning for real-world robot control, end-to-end learned autonomy systems, or large-scale ML for real-time decision-making.
Hands-on experience integrating learned planning or policy models with classical control systems and deterministic safety constraints.
Strong software engineering skills in C++ and Python, including experience with real-time autonomy stacks.
Demonstrated ability to take systems from research prototype to deployed production platform.
Track record of driving architecture decisions across perception, planning, and controls teams.
Preferred: MS or PhD in Robotics, Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field.
Preferred: experience with autonomous vehicles, deployed robotics, or embodied AI systems in production.
Preferred: background in trajectory planning, behavior modeling, or autonomy policy design.
Preferred: familiarity with VLA architectures, foundation models for robot control, large-scale pre-trained policies, data flywheels, simulation-based training pipelines, functional safety standards, ISO 26262, or SOTIF.

Base benefits include medical, dental, vision, 401(k), paid time off, and stock options.
Full-time, on-site work at the Sunnyvale headquarters is required.

51-200 employees