Sr. Robotics Engineer, Motion Planning

The role

You will lead motion planning and trajectory generation for a robot arm. You will focus on reducing cycle time and maintaining safety through kinematics, dynamics, and constrained optimization.

What you will do

• Own trajectory generation and time parameterization.
• Drive motion performance through advanced time parameterization and optimization-based motion.
• Ensure smooth, jerk-limited motion that maintains payload stability and hardware safety.
• Own geometric path planning for a high-DOF manipulator.
• Evaluate and evolve the planning architecture and toolchain.
• Integrate perception outputs into the planning scene.
• Define motion-performance metrics and validate gains in simulation and on real hardware.
• Set technical direction for motion planning.
• Mentor junior and mid-level engineers.
• Collaborate across autonomy, perception, controls, and robot software.

Required qualifications

• 5+ years of professional experience in motion planning, trajectory optimization, or manipulator control.
• Experience with production or real-hardware deployment.
• B.S. or M.S. in Robotics, Computer Science, Mechanical/Electrical Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent industry experience).
• Strong grounding in classical trajectory generation and time-parameterization methods.
• Deep grasp of manipulator kinematics and dynamics.
• Background in optimization-based motion (optimal control, QP/NLP-based trajectory optimization).
• Deep proficiency in C++ (modern standards), Python, and ROS 1 or ROS 2.
• Experience validating cycle-time and reliability improvements on real hardware, backed by simulation.
• Strong problem-solving and data-driven decision-making.
• Excellent communication.

Nice to have

• Hands-on expertise with MoveIt and motion planning frameworks (OMPL, RRT/RRT-Connect/PRM, CHOMP/TrajOpt).
• Experience with industrial manipulators (e.g., KUKA) and real-time joint control.
• Experience planning for multi-object or multi-pick manipulation.
• Experience optimizing for throughput or cycle time in a production robotics or logistics setting.
• Experience with GPU-accelerated or learning-based motion planning in addition to classical methods.
• Experience with physics-based or kinematic simulation for planning validation (Isaac Sim, Gazebo, MuJoCo, Bullet).

About the company

Contoro Robotics is an Austin-based company building autonomous truck-unloading robots for warehouse operations. They are a fast-growing startup transforming the supply chain industry.