Senior Software Engineer, Motion Planning - DoorDash Labs

About the role

DoorDash Labs is the company's automation and robotics arm, founded in 2018 to advance last-mile delivery technology. This position focuses on building and deploying behavior and motion planning systems for fully autonomous delivery vehicles. You will tackle complex urban and suburban driving challenges while working alongside a small, experienced team of robotics industry veterans. The group prioritizes measurable business outcomes and expects engineers to draw on deep prior experience shipping production autonomy. You will own the design and execution of core planning stacks that directly impact vehicle safety and delivery reliability. Your work will translate high-level product goals into robust motion policies that operate under real-world constraints. You are expected to drive technical investigations that reduce disengagements and improve planner robustness across diverse environments. Collaboration with cross-functional partners will ensure that planning decisions align with perception, prediction, and control requirements.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Architect and deliver real-time behavior and motion planning features for autonomous vehicles operating in varied urban and suburban environments.
• Lead investigations into planner-related disengagements and systematically resolve long-tail edge cases that impact deployment.
• Create scalable simulation, evaluation, and validation pipelines to support safe expansion into new geo-fenced areas.
• Partner with perception, prediction, controls, and platform teams to drive end-to-end autonomy improvements across the entire stack.
• Shape architectural choices that boost planner reliability, generalization, and compute efficiency for production workloads.
• Implement robust decision-making algorithms that handle complex traffic scenarios while adhering to safety and regulatory constraints.
• Define and maintain metrics frameworks that quantify planner performance and directly inform iteration priorities.
• Mentor and guide junior engineers by providing code reviews, design discussions, and technical leadership in planning disciplines.
• Integrate modern AI coding assistants such as Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor into the full development lifecycle from design through monitoring.
• Drive data-driven evaluation practices using simulation and performance metrics to guide planning system improvements.
• Own critical components of the motion planning stack, ensuring correctness, efficiency, and robustness under diverse conditions.
• Collaborate with operations and field teams to incorporate real-world feedback into planning improvements and rapid iterations.
• Contribute to the design of fail-safe behaviors and fallback strategies that maintain safety in edge-case situations.
• Advance the state of the art in last-mile autonomy by researching and prototyping novel planning techniques where appropriate.

Requirements

• BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, or a related discipline, or equivalent hands-on experience.
• Strong C++ engineering background with a history of building production-grade systems that scale.
• Direct experience developing or deploying motion planning, robotics, or real-time decision-making software in operational environments.
• Familiarity with AI coding assistants such as Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor across the full development lifecycle including design, code generation, testing, monitoring, and release.
• Comfort using data-driven evaluation, simulation, and performance metrics to inform engineering decisions and trade-offs.
• Demonstrated ability to diagnose and resolve complex bugs in safety-critical real-time systems.
• Experience working with sensor fusion and perception data streams to inform planning and decision-making.
• Understanding of industry standards and best practices for functional safety and reliability in autonomous systems.
• Track record of delivering software that meets strict timelines and quality expectations in fast-paced environments.
• Willingness to work closely with cross-functional teams to align technical solutions with business and operational goals.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills for documenting designs and coordinating with distributed stakeholders.
• Commitment to writing clean, maintainable, and well-tested code that can withstand rigorous operational scrutiny.
• Ability to thrive in an environment where responsibilities evolve rapidly and ownership extends beyond defined tasks.
• Willingness to engage in on-call and incident response activities as part of maintaining high system availability.

Nice to have

• Experience with simulation platforms and tools commonly used in autonomous vehicle development.
• Prior work on production deployments of autonomy in logistics, delivery, or transportation domains.
• Knowledge of optimization techniques for real-time planning under uncertainty.

Practical notes

• Compensation is localized based on work location; ranges may change with market conditions.
• Benefits include 401(k) with employer match, 16 weeks paid parental leave, medical, dental, and vision coverage, 11 paid holidays, disability and life insurance, family-forming assistance, mental health program, wellness reimbursement, and commuter benefits match.
• Salaried employees receive flexible paid time off plus 80 hours of paid sick leave annually.
• Applicants requiring accommodations should notify their recruiting contact at initial outreach.
• NYC applicants: Covey is used as part of the hiring process and qualifies as an AEDT; independent audit results are available at getcovey.com/nyc-local-law-144