Principal Engineer Team Lead - Trajectory Planning Lead

Mission Summary

As a Technical Lead Manager at Motional, you'll lead a team responsible for the development and delivery of core trajectory planning algorithms via numerical optimization for autonomous vehicles. In this role, you will be at the forefront of shaping the motion planning and control systems that enable our fleet to navigate complex environments safely, efficiently, and comfortably.

As a key leader, you will drive the development and continuous performance improvements of cutting-edge trajectory generation algorithms, collaborate with cross-functional teams (Planning, Perception, Prediction, Localization, ML Products, and Systems Engineering), and mentor a talented group of highly skilled engineers to deliver state-of-the-art solutions.

If you are passionate about autonomous driving and being part of our commercial launch this year, thrive on solving challenging real-world problems, and eager to make a significant impact in a rapidly evolving field, we want to hear from you!

What you'll do

• Lead and scale a high-impact trajectory planning team, defining its technical vision, execution strategy, and long-term organizational role within the Motion organization.
• Drive commercial launch readiness for trajectory planning by delivering on-road driving behavior improvements (safety, comfort, and assertiveness) across the fleet through feature expansion, continuous performance improvements, and innovation through state-of-the art methods.
• Apply a rigorous, metrics-driven framework to quantify and improve on-road performance. Champion leveraging existing training and evaluation pipelines to ensure scalable, production-ready delivery.
• Manage the computational efficiency and real-time performance of trajectory generation algorithms, ensuring latency budget compliance.
• Lead the rapid triage and root-cause analysis (RCA) of critical fleet incidents, translating real-world edge cases into immediate algorithmic refinements and validation sets.
• Oversee the successful execution of complex, multi-team initiatives, ensuring technical alignment from design through deployment while maintaining a rigorous standard for testing and validation to meet the high safety bars required for our commercial launch.
• Coordinate with peer leads to provide technical leadership, making consequential decisions on architectural direction, strategic investments, tactical execution, and technical debt reduction.Ensure technical excellence through rigorous design and code reviews while actively facilitating the professional growth and mentorship of your engineering team. Set and drive ambitious goals that challenge the team to deliver industry-leading trajectory planning solutions.
• Define and negotiate quarterly and annual technical roadmaps aligned with company-level autonomy milestones in coordinate with project managers and execute plans on schedule.

What we're looking for

• Proven Engineering Leadership: 2+ years of experience managing high-performing development teams, with a demonstrable track record of inspiring, mentoring, and coaching engineers and driving measurable productivity gains.
• Ship-to-Production Mindset: Experience leading the delivery of production-quality algorithms in a high-stakes environment (Autonomous Vehicles, Robotics, or Aerospace). You know what it takes to move from a prototype to a commercially viable product.
• Strategic Vision: Ability to look beyond the immediate deliverables to define and defend a balanced technical roadmap that balances long-term architectural health with the urgent needs of a 2026 commercial launch.
• Technical Domain Expertise: Deep theoretical and practical expertise in numerical optimization and optimal control. You should be highly proficient in areas such as Model Predictive Control, nonlinear programming, and convex optimization applied to real-time trajectory generation.
• Advanced Motion Planning: Significant experience solving motion planning problems under uncertainty, including interaction-aware planning with dynamic agents and complex environmental constraints. Experience with Machine Learning based approaches is a significant plus.
• Full-Stack Robotics Context: Strong intuition for the entire robotics stack. You understand how upstream (Perception, Prediction) and downstream (Control, Actuation) systems impact trajectory feasibility and fleet safety.
• Production-Grade Software Development: Expertise in Modern C++ development within a Linux environment, with a focus on writing high-performance, real-time, and safety-critical code.
• Tooling Proficiency: Fluency in Python for rapid prototyping, data analysis, and visualization. Experience applying AI-augmented development workflows to large-scale Modern C++ codebases (e.g., agentic tools for multi-file refactoring, automated test generation, semantic code navigation, and code review acceleration) is strongly preferred. Experience with SQL or big-data frameworks for fleet-scale performance analysis is a significant plus.
• Influence & Clarity: Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to translate complex mathematical concepts into actionable plans for cross-functional stakeholders and executive leadership.
• Educational Foundation: Master’s or PhD in Robotics, Computer Science, Electrical/Mechanical Engineering, or a related quantitative field.

We encourage a hybrid schedule with in-office time at one of our locations in Boston, Pittsburgh, or Las Vegas to support collaboration, or this role can be fully remote.

The salary range for this role is an estimate based on a wide range of compensation factors including but not limited to specific skills, experience and expertise, role location, certifications, licenses, and business needs. The estimated compensation range listed in this job posting reflects base salary only. This role may include additional forms of compensation such as a bonus or company equity.

The recruiter assigned to this role can share more information about the specific compensation and benefit details associated with this role during the hiring process. Candidates for certain positions are eligible to participate in Motional’s benefits program.

Motional’s benefits include but are not limited to medical, dental, vision, 401k with a company match, health saving accounts, life insurance, pet insurance, and more.

Salary Range

$240,000 USD - $330,000 USD

Motional is a driverless technology company making autonomous vehicles a safe, reliable, and accessible reality. We’re driven by something more.

Our journey is always people first.

We aren't just developing driverless cars; we're creating safer roadways, more equitable transportation options, and making our communities better places to live, work, and connect. Our team is made up of engineers, researchers, innovators, dreamers and doers, who are creating a technology with the potential to transform the way we move.

Higher purpose, greater impact.

We’re creating first-of-its-kind technology that will transform transportation. To do so successfully, we must design for everyone in our cities and on our roads. We believe in building a great place to work through a progressive, global culture that is diverse, inclusive, and ensures people feel valued at every level of the organization.

Diversity helps us to see the world differently; it’s not only good for our business, it’s the right thing to do.

Scale up, not starting up.

Our team is behind some of the industry's largest leaps forward, including the first fully-autonomous cross-country drive in the U.S, the launch of the world's first robotaxi pilot, and operation of the world's longest-standing public robotaxi fleet. We’re driven to scale; we’re moving towards commercialization of our technology, and we need team members who are ready to embrace change and challenges.

Formed as a joint venture between Hyundai Motor Group and Aptiv, Motional is fundamentally changing how people move through their lives. Headquartered in Boston, Motional has operations in the U.S and Asia. For more information, visit www.Motional.com and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube.

Motional AD Inc. is an EOE. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. To comply with Federal Law, we participate in E-Verify. All newly-hired employees are queried through this electronic system established by the DHS and the SSA to verify their identity and employment eligibility.