Senior Motion Planning & Controls Software Engineer

Join Our Team

At Onward Robotics, we are a bold, gritty, and purposeful team with an ambitious mission to revolutionize fulfillment. Our team is driven by a client-first mentality: we aim to solve hard problems and fuel our clients’ growth with innovation. We are seeking talented individuals who will have a huge impact on both our business and our team. Join us on our mission as we move fast, think big, and have fun!

About Us

Onward Robotics delivers innovative automation technology that coordinates humans and robots as a cohesive system to revolutionize fulfillment. Our Meet Me solution combines proprietary software with person-to-goods mobile robots to increase efficiency in warehousing, distribution, and e-commerce operations. Onward Robotics provides the boost in productivity, flexibility, and speed that companies need to remain competitive and grow. Learn more at onwardrobotics.com.

Job Purpose

As a Senior Motion Planning & Controls Software Engineer in our Robot Software Department, you will focus on the design and implementation of motion planning and controls software for our autonomous mobile robots, including cobots that operate directly alongside human workers. As a core team member, you will work in an Agile software development environment to improve the existing motion planning and controls software. These improvements will help make our autonomous robots more effective, reliable, and safe in uncertain and dynamic environments shared with people.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Design, implement, and maintain the motion planning and controls subsystem of autonomous robots
• Participate in requirements-driven, object-oriented software design
• Implement & deploy software in both simulation and physical targets
• Participate in an Agile development environment
• Design and tune motion planning and control behaviors for robots operating safely in close proximity to human workers, balancing throughput with safety margins

Core Competencies:

• Ability to be flexible and adaptable in a startup environment
• Good team player with great communication skills

Typical Day:

• Participate in daily stand-ups to align on priorities, blockers, and progress with the team.
• Design, refine, and implement path-planning, trajectory-generation, and feedback-control algorithms primarily in C++.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams (mechanical, electrical, and design engineers) to test localization systems on real robots, collecting sensor data and iterating quickly on solutions.
• Take ownership of assigned features or subsystems, gathering requirements, reviewing designs, and pushing updates through development, testing, and deployment.
• Review code from peers, contribute to technical discussions, and champion best practices to ensure high-quality, maintainable software.
• Troubleshoot issues uncovered during robot testing, from localization drift to real-time optimization challenges, working hands-on with hardware as needed.
• Mentor junior engineers, offering guidance on design choices, coding practices, and debugging approaches.
• Document work, update the team, and plan next steps to maintain team alignment and project momentum.

Required Skills:

• Modern C++ programming fluency and design patterns
• Experience working with physical robots and the flow of information through its primary sub-systems
• Experience with source code management systems (e.g. git) and performing detailed code reviews
• Experience with Linux systems

Minimum Experience Requirements:

• 2-3 years of work experience creating classical motion planning algorithms for autonomous mobile robots
• Strong foundation in practical mathematical skills (e.g. linear algebra)
• Strong foundation in motion planning concepts and basic planning algorithms such as A*, RRT, RRT*, DWA, Potential Field, etc.
• Ability to evaluate existing upstream outputs and understand the impact to trajectory tracking & control needs when implementing a planning solution
• Understanding of collaborative robot (cobot) safety principles for systems operating alongside human workers, including speed and separation monitoring, power/force limiting, and relevant safety standards (e.g., ISO 10218, ISO/TS 15066)

Preferred Experience Requirements:

• 5+ years of work experience in end-to-end system development & deployment of production level motion planning algorithms for autonomous mobile robots
• Experience with different types of planners such as Lattice planners, modeling behaviors for heuristics-based planners
• Fusion of multi-stage planners (e.g. local, global, mission)
• Working with GPU based embedded systems (e.g. CUDA)

Minimum Education Requirements:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical/Computer Engineering, or Computer Science

Preferred Education Requirements:

• Master’s Degree in Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical/Computer Engineering, or Computer Science