Senior Software Engineer, Motion Planning & Control

Job Description

Requirements
- -----------

### Must have:

### - We need someone who can work from our Berkeley, CA office at least Tuesday through Thursday - We are looking for 3 years of software engineering experience, with strong production-level skills in modern C and Python - We want hands-on experience in motion planning, decision making, or vehicle control for autonomous vehicles, ADAS, or robotics, such as optimization-based planning, search methods, optimal control, MPC, or probabilistic decision making - We need a solid foundation in linear algebra, geometry, statistics and probability, and vehicle dynamics - We value experience taking features from design through real-world deployment rather than only building prototypes - We are looking for someone who can decompose complex, ambiguous problems into clear technical solutions - We want someone with well-formed opinions based on experience who also remains open-minded and adaptable - Bonus experience includes deploying planning or control software on real vehicles, working with real-time embedded systems or RTOS, and using ML-based planning approaches alongside classical methods

Responsibilities:
- ----------------

- We expect you to design and build motion planning algorithms and decision-making logic that deliver safe, smooth, dynamically feasible behavior in uncertain environments - We need you to reason about interactions with other road users and turn desired driving behavior into algorithmic improvements across the planning stack - We will rely on you to develop vehicle control software, including control and estimation methods for longitudinal and lateral vehicle dynamics - You will write mission-critical real-time C that runs on vehicle hardware and embedded automotive compute - You will collaborate with our Perception and Software Platform teams to define clean interfaces between perception, planning, and control - You will support driving-function demos on our vehicles, from bring-up through customer-facing runs - You will build simulation and analysis tools in Python and C to evaluate planner and controller performance before deployment - You will define driving-quality and safety metrics, analyze field data, and use those insights to guide development - You will contribute to failure and hazard analyses and implement safety mitigations in planning and control software
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Company:
- -------

We are Zendar, a venture-backed company building a radar-centric autonomy stack that makes vehicles and robots autonomous in any environment. Our approach places RF sensing at the center of perception, giving us strength in long-range sensing, high-speed scenarios, and bad weather. We have built the full stack in-house, from radar hardware and signal processing to multimodal perception foundation models and path and trajectory planning. This role sits on our Vehicle Motion Planning \& Control team in Berkeley, CA, where a small, collaborative group is working to unlock new driving behaviors such as Navigate on Autopilot on highways. We offer the chance to have meaningful impact, work alongside highly motivated engineers, and execute in a high-ownership environment. Our benefits include medical, dental, and vision insurance, flexible PTO, equity, a performance-based bonus, daily catered lunch, and a stocked office fridge. We are an equal opportunity employer and participate in E-Verify.
- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------