Principal Engineer - Prediction & Planning

Commercial vehicles are one of the most immediately viable applications for real-world robotics, and First Principle has partnered with a startup operating at the frontier of autonomous freight operations, with key logistics partnerships in place, a proven system, and live vehicles on-road across the South.

After recently closing a significant funding round, our client is scaling core autonomy systems to support the next phase of commercial deployment, and we’re seeking a Senior/Principal Engineer to take ownership of the Prediction & Planning stack, shaping how these systems understand the world around them and driving the most critical decisions that keep them safely on course as they thunder past you at ever higher speeds – it’s a critical hire.

Success Criteria

• Deep experience leading the development of motion planning and/or behavioral prediction for autonomous platforms operating in complex, real-world environments, including autonomous vehicles, mobile robotics, or similarly safety-critical systems.
• Strong fundamentals in probabilistic reasoning, trajectory optimization, and decision-making under uncertainty with a track record taking algorithms from research through to deployment.
• Experience working with real-world sensor data from lidar, radar, and camera systems, and an understanding of how perception outputs inform and constrain planning and prediction pipelines.
• A track record of delivering robust, safety-critical software in a fast-moving environment, with experience navigating the gap between controlled testing and the messiness of real-world commercial operations.
• Comfort operating as a senior technical voice within a multidisciplinary team spanning perception, mapping, simulation, and vehicle systems engineering.

Prediction & planning encompasses some of the hardest remaining problems to be solved and for the right engineer, this is a chance for true ownership and authority. This business has real momentum, with strong venture backing and growing commercial revenue, yet remains early enough that individual engineers have outsized influence on direction and culture.

If this is your domain and you're interested in learning more, apply, or reach out to our team today.