{"id":630542,"url":"https://alion.io/job/embedding-vc-senior-staff-robotics-engineer-motion-planning","title":"Senior / Staff Robotics Engineer, Motion Planning","company":{"id":6711,"name":"Embedding VC","domain":"embedding.vc","url":"https://alion.io/company/embedding-vc","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":true,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":null},"role":"Robotics","role_family":"Robotics","seniority":"staff","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Milpitas, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":259000,"max_usd":513000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":54},"experience_years_min":4,"visa_sponsorship":true,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"Autonomous Navigation","optional":false},{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"CUDA","optional":false},{"name":"CUDA Toolkit","optional":false},{"name":"Model Predictive Control","optional":false},{"name":"Motion Planning","optional":false},{"name":"Physical AI","optional":false},{"name":"SLAM","optional":false},{"name":"Visual-Inertial Odometry","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-07-28T04:26:39Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-07-28","last_verified_at":"2026-10-20T18:45:52Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":84,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":84},"description":"Why RoboForce\nRoboForce is an AI robotics company developing Physical AI-powered Robo-Labor for dull, dirty, and dangerous work. The company's robots are engineered for demanding industrial environments, with a focus on real-world deployment and scalability.\nWe are seeking a Senior / Staff Robotics Engineer, Motion Planning to own the local mobility and safety stack for our fleet. In this role, you will bridge the gap between AI-driven perception and physical hardware execution. You will consume traversability and semantic costmaps generated by our AI team and translate them into safe, dynamically feasible, and deterministic motion. You are solving the physics of mobility on unpredictable terrain, ensuring our humanoid platform respects its physical limits, shifting center of mass, and traction constraints.\nResponsibilities\nDynamic Motion Planning: Architect and implement advanced local planners (e.g., optimization-based approaches like MPC, MPPI, or custom contouring control) that translate AI-generated routes into trajectories that a heavy, non-holonomic base can physically execute on uneven terrain.\nAI Integration & Costmap Consumption: Build the high-performance C++ pipelines that ingest the AI team's neural network outputs (semantic maps, learned costmaps) in real-time and convert them into deterministic mathematical constraints for the planner.\nCenter of Mass (CoM) Aware Navigation: Ensure local planners dynamically adjust to real-time changes in the robot's Center of Mass caused by the lifting column and dual-arm payloads. Your trajectories must guarantee stability and prevent tipping on slopes or rough ground.\nDeterministic Safety Architectures: AI models hallucinate. You will build the deterministic C++ safety layer and fallback behaviors that override AI inputs if a commanded path violates physical safety constraints or if off-the-shelf SLAM tracking drops.\nWBC Integration: Architect the local planning interfaces to seamlessly pass base trajectories, velocity limits, and dynamic constraints to our upcoming Whole-Body Control (WBC) architecture, bridging the gap between base mobility and upper-body manipulation.\nRequirements\nEducation: Ph.D. in Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field, OR an M.S. degree with 4+ years of relevant industry experience.\nMotion Planning Expertise: Deep hands-on experience developing and tuning advanced local planners and trajectory optimization algorithms for mobile robots in complex, unstructured environments.\nRigid Body Dynamics: Strong understanding of kinematics, vehicle dynamics, and center-of-mass constraints for top-heavy mobile robots operating on uneven outdoor terrain.\nC++ Performance Engineering: Expertise in modern C++ (C++17/20), with strict attention to real-time performance, memory management, and low-latency execution. You must be comfortable bridging high-latency AI outputs with hard real-time control loops.\nField Deployment: Proven track record of building and deploying autonomous navigation stacks on real, physical robotic platforms in the wild.\nRequires 5 days/week in-office collaboration with the teams.\nBonus Qualifications\nWBC / Manipulation: Familiarity with Whole-Body Control frameworks, operational space control, and how mobile bases synchronize with high-DOF manipulators.\nApplied SLAM / State Estimation: Experience tuning, debugging, or filtering outputs from commercial SLAM/VIO systems when they fail in visually degraded environments.\nSlip & Traction Estimation: Background in detecting slip or loss of traction from proprioceptive sensor signals and adapting planning constraints accordingly.\nGPU Acceleration: Experience using CUDA to accelerate grid processing or trajectory sampling pipelines.\nBenefits\nCompetitive stock options/equity programs.\nHealth, dental, and vision insurance, 401(k) plan.\nVisa sponsorship and green card support for qualified candidates.\nLunches and dinners, a fully stocked kitchen, and regular team-building events.","description_format":"text","description_chars":4003,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":4,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"phd","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Stock options","Vision insurance"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Robotic Software & Control Systems","Venture Capital"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-10T19:15:14Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 1","filings_12m":1,"filings_prev_12m":0,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":167500,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-15T11:24:14+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)"],"filings_for_role_12m":0}],"liveness":{"score":78,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.868,"p_room":0.9,"age_days":84,"expected_fill_days":162,"reasons":["conf:0","velocity","win:mid"],"computed_at":"2026-10-20T05:45:00Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/embedding-vc-senior-staff-robotics-engineer-motion-planning","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/embedding-vc-senior-staff-robotics-engineer-motion-planning.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-20T19:10:32Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":22102,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-21T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":6711},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=6711"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fembedding-vc-senior-staff-robotics-engineer-motion-planning"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fembedding-vc-senior-staff-robotics-engineer-motion-planning"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fembedding-vc-senior-staff-robotics-engineer-motion-planning"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/embedding-vc-senior-staff-robotics-engineer-motion-planning\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fembedding-vc-senior-staff-robotics-engineer-motion-planning"}]}