Senior Software Development Engineer, Motion Planning - Autonomous Vehicles

NVIDIA has been transforming computer graphics, PC gaming, and accelerated computing for more than 25 years. It’s a unique legacy of innovation that’s fueled by great technology—and amazing people. Today, we’re tapping into the unlimited potential of AI to define the next era of computing. An era in which our GPU acts as the brains of computers, robots, and self-driving cars that can understand the world. Doing what’s never been done before takes vision, innovation, and the world’s best talent. As an NVIDIAN, you’ll be immersed in a diverse, supportive environment where everyone is inspired to do their best work. Come join the team and see how you can make a lasting impact on the world.

We are seeking an experienced Motion planning senior software development engineer to develop key features for our autonomous driving platform. In this role, you will work on a mix of Trajectory planning, Motion Planning problems to build focused software solutions. Through effective collaboration with established teams, you will help design and mature new products all the way through to production.

What you’ll be doing:

• Lead motion planning features from initial design through productization and deployment.
• Model L2, L3, and L4 vehicle behaviors and driving modes, using both optimal-control and classical behavior-planning methods.
• Develop and integrate learned planning policies, including reinforcement learning and imitation learning, alongside optimization-based planners in the autonomous driving stack.
• Build and maintain training pipelines and simulation environments, and benchmark learned policies against classical baselines in complex urban scenarios.
• Optimize solvers and models for real-time deployment on automotive hardware.

What we need to see:

• BS or higher in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
• 8+ years of relevant experience.
• Proven ability to develop high-quality C++ and Python software for real-time systems within large, collaborative codebases.
• Strong applied math background in linear algebra, numerical methods, and convex optimization.
• Hands-on experience with machine learning in PyTorch, including RL methods such as PPO, GRPO, or actor-critic.

Ways to stand out from the crowd:

• Experience shipping autonomous driving features or embodied AI.
• Expertise in constrained optimization-based trajectory generation and classical planners such as lattice-based planners, hybrid A*, or RRTs.
• Background with generative policy or trajectory models such as Flow Matching, Diffusion, or AR-based decoders.
• Experience training policies on their own rollout distributions and handling compounding error.
• Experience with large-scale data flywheels: scenario mining from fleet logs, auto-labeling, and automated performance tracking.

Your base salary will be determined based on your location, experience, and other objective job-related factors. The expected base salary ranges for this position are:
184,000 USD – 287,500 USD for Level 4; and 224,000 USD – 356,500 USD for Level 5.Applications for this job will be accepted at least until November 18, 2026.

This posting is for an existing vacancy. 

NVIDIA uses AI tools in its recruiting processes.

NVIDIA is committed to fostering an inclusive work environment and proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As we highly value diversity in our current and future employees, we do not discriminate (including in our hiring and promotion practices) on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law.