Senior Software Engineer, Planning Infrastructure at Kodiak
Mountain View, CA
$180,000–$215,000
Jul 20, 2026
Mountain View, CA
Jul 22, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
This role sits within an autonomous trucking company's Planning team, focused on building the internal infrastructure that helps planning engineers work more effectively. Day-to-day work involves creating tools, libraries, evaluation systems, and developer workflows for behavior and motion planning — including testing frameworks, metrics pipelines, observability tooling, and safety-case infrastructure. It suits a generalist software engineer with a background in C++ and large-scale systems who prefers building the foundations others build on.
Senior level · 5+ years · San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA · Full-time
Pay in the description: $180,000–$215,000
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 4,600–7,900
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 (6)
The '5+ years' requirement is explicitly tied to C++ and large-scale software systems, so it is captured as the overall years minimum at the role level as well as informing seniority.
The posting lists 'metrics, logs, testing, debugging tools, simulation, or data-driven evaluation' as a single disjunctive requirement under 'What We're Looking For'. These are broad methodological areas rather than specific named tools or technologies, so only 'simulation' is retained as a concrete named technology; the rest are omitted per the generic-concept rule.
The 'Strong Plus' section (safety-case tooling, large-scale autonomy metrics and evaluation systems) is treated as preferred/nice-to-have. 'Large-scale autonomy metrics and evaluation systems' names no specific tool and is omitted; 'safety-case tooling' and 'test coverage infrastructure' are retained as preferred named capabilities.
The pay range ($180,000–$215,000 USD) is stated as the SF/Silicon Valley base salary range and spans several internal levels; actual pay will vary by location and experience.
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 1 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): performance optimization.
Read the full posting
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