Senior/Staff Software Engineer - Behavior Capabilities
- Salary
- USD 254,000 - 350,000 / per-year-salary
- Level
- Staff
- Work type
- Hybrid · Foster City
Not stated in the posting: visa.
Open. First seen 22 October 2026.
About the role
The Behavior Capabilities opportunity falls within the Fail Operational Planning team at Zoox. This team works to ensure that the robot continues to operate effectively, even in the presence of minor compartmentalized failures or degraded capabilities. The focus of the team includes developing behavioral and motion planning algorithms to improve trip progress, vehicle uptime metrics, and correspondingly a better customer experience.
This is a cutting-edge problem which requires teamwork and collaboration across a diverse group of experts including Planner, Perception, Prediction, Hardware, and more.
On this team, you will contribute to the next generation of algorithmic advancements to expand our robot’s ability to drive in some of the most complex scenarios. We are looking for an engineer who is excited to understand the interdependencies within the driving stack and takes ownership of their projects and has a holistic product focused approach towards development.
In this role, you will:
- Create principled algorithmic improvements to specific areas of driving behavior and implement those changes in our code base.
- Collaborate cross-functionally to develop strategies and intelligent behaviors to mitigate the performance degradation under various failure modes of the system.
- Architect and implement scalable solutions ensuring seamless integration with the rest of the driving stack.
- Partner with validation teams to define and execute tests for developed algorithms.
Qualifications:
- Master's degree in Computer Science or related field and 9+ years of experience
- Fluency in C++
- Extensive experience with programming and algorithm design
- Understanding of vehicle kinematics
Bonus Qualifications
- PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field
- Experience shipping products to market (commercial robotics, drones, consumer devices etc.)
- Demonstrated ability to create real-time motion planning algorithms in a cross-functional team
About Zoox
Zoox is developing the first ground-up, fully autonomous vehicle fleet and the supporting ecosystem required to bring this technology to market. Sitting at the intersection of robotics, machine learning, and design, Zoox aims to provide the next generation of mobility-as-a-service in urban environments. We’re looking for top talent that shares our passion and wants to be part of a fast-moving and highly execution-oriented team.
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Zoox's standard text
Accommodations
If you need an accommodation to participate in the application or interview process please reach out to accommodations@zoox.com or your assigned recruiter.
A Final Note:
You do not need to match every listed expectation to apply for this position. Here at Zoox, we know that diverse perspectives foster the innovation we need to be successful, and we are committed to building a team that encompasses a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and skills.
What this role asks for
In most of Zoox's ads
Machine Learning
Named in most of its open postings, whatever the role.
83% of this description is written for the role. The rest is Zoox's standard text, folded away below.
Compared with Zoox's other open jobs.
The team: Autonomy Software HIRES STEADILY
This role is one of 36 open in Autonomy Software. 5 were posted in the last 30 days and the oldest in February: a team that hires all year rather than one being built.
WHAT THE TEAM WORKS WITH, ACROSS ITS POSTINGS
Machine Learning (32 of 36), C++ (22 of 36), Python (17 of 36), Computer Vision (12 of 36), Deep Learning (9 of 36), CUDA (6 of 36), LLM (5 of 36)
OTHER ROLES ON THIS TEAM
- Senior Technical Program Manager - Verification and Validation posted Oct 7
- Manager, Technical Product Management – Autonomy Integration posted Oct 2
- Software Engineer - Planner GPU Compute posted Sep 27
- Senior Software Engineer - Planner GPU Compute posted Sep 25
- Senior Manager, Perception Data posted Sep 23
- Data Scientist - Perception Verification and Validation posted Sep 9
- Software Engineer - Collision Avoidance System Metrics posted Sep 3
- Senior Staff / Principal Software Engineer - Freeway Autonomy posted Aug 31
- Senior Software Engineer - Mapping Web posted Aug 28
- Senior/Staff Technical Program Manager - Autonomy Behaviors posted Aug 24
- Senior Machine Learning Engineer - Perception 3D Segmentation posted Jul 17
- Senior Full-stack Engineer - Mapping Web Services posted Jul 7
- Senior/Staff Software Engineer - Machine Learning & System Optimization posted Jun 30
- Software Engineer - Mapping Data Software posted Jun 18
- Senior/Staff Software Engineer - Planner Frameworks Pipeline posted Jun 16
- Software Engineer - Planner Frameworks Pipeline posted May 12
- Software Engineer - Driving Behavior posted May 12
- Principal Software Engineer, Perception Architect posted Apr 20
- Senior Data Scientist - Verification & Validation posted Mar 27
- Manager, Technical Program Management - Artificial Intelligence posted Feb 20
- Software Engineering Manager - Perception Occupancy posted Feb 3
- Software Engineer - Mission Planning posted Jan 9
- Senior / Staff Machine Learning Engineer - Behavior Models for Road Users posted Dec 17
- Senior / Staff Software Engineer - Motion Planning posted Nov 5
- Senior Staff / Principal Machine Learning Engineer - Autonomy Behaviors posted Nov 4
- Senior/Staff Technical Program Manager - Artificial Intelligence posted Oct 21
- Senior Machine Learning Engineer - Perception posted May 20
- Software Engineer - Road Network Tools posted Mar 25
- Software Engineer - Behavior Capabilities posted Dec 2
- Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer - Perception posted Nov 12
- Software Engineer - Learned Trajectory Machine Learning Engineer posted Nov 7
- Senior / Staff Software Engineer - Learned Trajectory Machine Learning Engineer posted Nov 7
- Senior Staff Software Engineer - Perception & Sensing posted May 3
- Staff Data Scientist - Behavior Evaluation posted May 4
- Software Engineer - Motion Planning posted Feb 8
From the team and dates on Zoox's own job board.
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