Senior Software Engineer, Behavior & Motion Planning at Kodiak
Mountain View, CA
$185,000–$245,000
Jul 20, 2026
Mountain View, CA
Jul 22, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
This role focuses on building and maintaining behavior planning and motion planning systems for a self-driving commercial trucking platform. The engineer will own features across the full lifecycle — from design and implementation to validation and deployment — and will debug real-world autonomy behavior using logs, simulation, and metrics. It suits someone with a production software background in planning, robotics, or autonomous vehicles, comfortable working across a broad autonomy stack in C++.
Senior level · San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA · Full-time
Pay in the description: $185,000–$245,000
Posted 2 times — it's one opening, so apply once.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 6,100 people in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 3,200–7,900
Applicant volume Heavy — This req sits in a large pool with little in its requirements to thin it, and auto-apply tools fire at everything in the occupation. Applying early and leading with the rare skills below is what gets read.
What the occupation pays Median $217,796 (middle half $177,469–$231,052). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (5)
The posted pay range ($185,000–$245,000/yr) is described as spanning 'several internal levels' in the SF/Silicon Valley market, so the actual offer for a given candidate may fall within a narrower band.
No minimum years of experience is stated at the role level; seniority is inferred from the 'Senior' title, end-to-end ownership expectations, and the mentoring responsibility.
Behavior planning, motion planning, and simulation are treated as hard gates based on their prominent placement in both the role description and the 'What you'll bring' requirements section. Robotics and autonomous vehicles appear in the same section but are framed as 'or related areas,' making them softer alternatives rather than strict gates.
The posting notes that some roles may require export-license review or U.S. person/citizenship verification due to DoD work, but no formal security clearance is explicitly required for this position.
Ignored 2 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): behavior planning, motion planning.
Read the full posting
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