Staff Software Engineer, Motion Planning at Aerovect

WHO WE ARE AeroVect is transforming ground handling with autonomy, redefining how airlines and ground service providers around the globe run day-to-day operations. We are a Series A company backed by top-tier venture capital investors in aviation and autonomous driving. Our customers include some of the world’s largest airlines and ground handling providers. For more information, visit www.aerovect.com [Upgrade to PRO to see link] JOB DESCRIPTION We are looking for an experienced Staff Software Engineer who can design and build best-in-class planning systems for autonomous driving in structured, low-speed environments. In this role, you'll be the technical backbone of the planning stack — owning the design and implementation of production-grade mission planning, behavior planning, and motion planning software. You'll work across the full planning pipeline to achieve category-defining vehicle autonomy for the airside, tackling hard problems in trajectory optimization, decision-making under uncertainty, and real-time constraint optimization. This opportunity offers a deeply technical engineer the chance to shape a market-defining enterprise product that combines autonomous vehicle technology with a robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) business model. This role reports to our Planning Tech Lead and works closely with the autonomy engineering team. You Will: - Design, implement, and iterate on the mission planner, behavior planner, and motion planner for autonomous ground support equipment operating in airport airside environments. - Drive key technical decisions across the planning stack — selecting algorithms, defining interfaces, and establishing the architecture that the team builds on. - Prototype and evaluate new planning approaches (e.g., optimization-based methods, search-based planners, learning-augmented pipelines) and bring the best ideas to production. - Collaborate cross-functionally with perception, controls, localization, and systems engineering teams to deliver an integrated autonomous driving system. - Establish and promote best practices in software development, functional safety, and systems engineering as they apply to the planning domain. - Mentor other engineers through technical guidance, code review, and design discussions. You Have: - Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Math, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Robotics, Physics, or a related field. - Extensive hands-on experience designing and implementing planning modules for autonomous systems shipped to production or deployed in real-world operations. - Strong programming skills in C++ (preferred) or Python, and experience with Linux-based operating systems. - Demonstrated ability to take ambiguous technical problems and drive them to well-architected solutions independently. - Excellent communication skills, proactiveness, and a strong sense of ownership. We Prefer: - MS or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Robotics, or a related field. - Mastery of Modern C++ (14 and beyond) and safety-critical coding practices (e.g., MISRA, ISO 26262). - 5+ years of industry experience in planning for robotic ground vehicles. - In-depth understanding of DDS frameworks like ROS/ROS2 or other networking middleware. - Experience in startup environments, demonstrating adaptability to rapidly changing priorities.