Senior Software Engineer (Manipulation)
General Motors23 hours ago
Base Salary
$129k - $234k/yr
Responsibilities
- Build and own manipulation planning capabilities including collision-free planning, trajectory optimization, and time parameterization.
- Implement and tune planners for industrial arms and mobile manipulators while meeting cycle-time requirements.
- Build collision-environment representations from perception output and static scene models.
- Implement Cartesian and constrained motion planning for approach, grasp, and place phases.
- Develop mobile manipulation capabilities including base placement, redundancy resolution, and whole-body motion.
- Build an execution layer that monitors trajectory tracking and responds to deviation and contact.
- Define and maintain interfaces between perception, planning, and control.
- Diagnose planning failures from field data and convert them into regression cases.
- Collaborate with controls and perception engineers and remote teams across multiple time zones.
Requirements
- 6+ years of professional engineering experience, including 2+ years in motion planning or manipulation.
- Experience deploying manipulation planning on physical arms in a production or field setting.
- Experience meeting cycle-time requirements in addition to feasibility requirements.
- M.S. degree or higher in robotics, computer science, mechanical engineering, or a closely related technical field; equivalent industry experience with demonstrated simulation depth may be considered.
- Strong knowledge of sampling-based and optimization-based motion-planning methods and their failure modes.
- Knowledge of forward and inverse kinematics, dynamics, redundancy resolution, singularity handling, and Jacobian methods.
- Experience with trajectory optimization, time-optimal path parameterization, collision checking, and distance queries.
- Hands-on experience with MoveIt, OMPL, TrajOpt, Drake, or comparable frameworks.
- Strong C++ and Python skills and hands-on experience with ROS or ROS 2.
- Ability to balance simulation speed against accuracy and determine appropriate validation fidelity.
- Preferred experience includes FANUC arms or controller interfaces, force or impedance control, contact-rich manipulation, mobile manipulation, whole-body control, learned or hybrid planning, and open-source contributions to MoveIt or the ROS manipulation ecosystem.
Benefits
- Remote work arrangement, with employees living within a specified radius of a GM hub expected to report onsite three times per week or at another frequency set by their manager.
- Medical, dental, vision, Health Savings Account, Flexible Spending Accounts, retirement savings plan, sickness and accident benefits, life insurance, paid vacation and holidays, tuition assistance, employee assistance program, and GM vehicle discounts.
- Relocation benefits are available for candidates who qualify under company policy.
- Bonus potential through an incentive pay program based on company performance, job level, and individual performance.
About General Motors
General Motors designs, manufactures, and sells cars, trucks, and electric vehicles for consumers and commercial fleets under brands including Chevrolet, GMC, Cadillac, and Buick. A public company on the NYSE headquartered in Detroit and founded in 1908, it operates globally and is developing EVs on its Ultium battery platform. Revenue comes from vehicle and parts sales, connected services such as OnStar, and financing through GM Financial.