Senior Path Planning Engineer
San Francisco, CA, United States of America (Hybrid)
San Francisco, CA, United States of America (Hybrid)
We're seeking a Senior Path Planning Engineer to join the core team building Spacer's production level robot. This role is highly hands-on and multidisciplinary, working at the intersection of autonomy, motion planning, and controls. You'll be responsible for designing, implementing, and optimizing navigation and path planning systems to enable reliable robot behavior in complex construction environments. As an early hire, you'll play a critical role in proving technical feasibility, shaping our engineering culture, and leading planning architecture for the autonomy team.
Spacer Robotics is building autonomous, non-humanoid robotic systems to construct infrastructure in extreme environments—from lunar bases to next-gen terrestrial job sites. Our vision is to disrupt the $16 trillion global construction industry by pioneering a new Deep Tech philosophy that blends robotics, AI, and systems engineering at the frontier.
6+ years of experience in robotics path planning, motion planning, and navigation.
Expert-level proficiency in C, C++, and Python for production robotics systems.
Strong experience with ROS2 in real-world deployments.
Proficiency with Git for version control and collaborative development.
Working knowledge of Docker for reproducible builds, deployment, and CI pipelines.
Deep experience with:
◦ Global path planning algorithms
◦ Local planning and trajectory optimization
◦ Costmap generation and obstacle representation
◦ Nav2 or equivalent navigation frameworks
Strong understanding of:
◦ Robot kinematics and dynamics
◦ Coordinate frames and transformations
◦ Real-time and embedded system constraints
◦ Optimization techniques and numerical methods
Proven track record of delivering planning systems on physical robots, not only in simulation.
Experience leading planning architecture for a commercial robotics product.
Ready to roll up the sleeves and join an early stage startup environment.
Experience with industrial, construction or mobile robotics.
Familiarity with behavior trees, hierarchical task planning, or mission planning frameworks.
Experience with optimization libraries for trajectory optimization.
Knowledge of functional safety, fault tolerance, and degraded planning modes.
Experience working with unstructured or outdoor environments.
What will you do:
Planning Architecture & Technical Leadership
Own the path planning and navigation architecture from global mission planning to local obstacle avoidance.
Define technical direction, architecture trade-offs, and long-term planning roadmap.
Lead planning-related design reviews, root-cause analysis, and performance optimization.
Global & Local Planning
Design and implement global path planning algorithms
Develop local planners and trajectory optimization methods for real-time obstacle avoidance.
Integrate obstacle detection, costmaps, and dynamic obstacle handling into planning pipelines.
Balance planning quality, computational efficiency, and real-time performance constraints.
Navigation & Behavior Planning
Integrate and extend Nav2 or custom navigation frameworks for autonomous mobile robots.
Develop behavior trees, state machines, or task planners for complex autonomy missions.
Implement recovery behaviors and fault handling for robust operation in unstructured environments.
Establish quantitative metrics for planning success rate, path quality, and safety margins.
Motion Constraints & Kinematics
Incorporate robot kinematics, dynamics, and actuation constraints into planning algorithms.
Work with differential drive, skid-steer, or articulated robot configurations.
Ensure planned trajectories are kinematically feasible and dynamically safe.
Collaborate with controls engineers to ensure smooth handoff between planning and execution.
ROS & System Integration
Architect and maintain planning components within a ROS2-based autonomy stack.
Design node architectures, lifecycle management, diagnostics, and logging for planning systems.
Optimize ROS2 performance for real-time constraints on embedded platforms.
Manage message interfaces, action servers, QoS policies, and system observability.
Compute & Deployment
Select and justify appropriate compute platforms for planning workloads.
Balance performance, power, thermal, cost, and reliability constraints.
Optimize planning algorithms for CPU usage, memory, and real-time performance.
Work with hardware teams on bring-up and system-level optimization.
The US base salary range for this full-time position is between $140,000 - $230,000 annually. The pay offered for this position may vary based on several individual factors, including job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.
Competitive equity, depending on experience and role level. As one of our early engineering hires, your equity stake will be meaningful and reflect the impact you'll have on building our technology from the ground up.
The total compensation package may also include additional components/benefits depending on the specific role. This information will be shared if an employment offer is extended.
