Aurora Innovation is hiring a

Staff Software Engineer

Mountain View, United States

Who We Are

Aurora (Nasdaq: AUR) is delivering the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly to make transportation safer, increasingly accessible, and more reliable and efficient than ever before. The Aurora Driver is a self-driving system designed to operate multiple vehicle types, from freight-hauling trucks to ride-hailing passenger vehicles. It underpins Aurora’s driver-as-a-service products for trucking and ride-hailing. Aurora is working with industry leaders across the transportation ecosystem, including Continental, FedEx, Hirschbach, PACCAR, Ryder, Schneider, Toyota, Uber, Uber Freight, Volvo Trucks, Volvo Autonomous Solutions, and Werner. For Aurora’s latest news, visit aurora.tech and @aurora_inno on Twitter.

Aurora hires talented people with diverse backgrounds who are ready to help build a transportation ecosystem that will make our roads safer, get crucial goods where they need to go, and make mobility more efficient and accessible for all. We’re searching for a Staff level or higher Software Engineer to work with the Core-Simulator team. The team empowers Aurorans to test, train, and evaluate the Aurora Driver in simulation. The Core Simulator team is composed of simulation domain and software engineering experts working towards the goal of enabling quick and thorough evaluation of motion planning, control, localization and autonomy system level software.

The team is responsible for the primary simulation engine and offline testing framework. They build models for subsystems of the autonomy stack, models for the physical world, and tooling to generate complex scenarios. They build the technology for producing realistic virtual interactions at scale, modeling the physics and behaviors of agents in the world, and gaining and presenting insights about our rich simulation data.The team's goal is to enable rapid development and validation of the autonomy stack through comprehensive offline analysis.

In this role, you will

  • Develop software in standard C++17 and Python, using modern best practices. This is a hands-on software development role.  
  • Contributing to engineering best practices on a large and complex code base.
  • Optionally manage a small number of direct reports.
  • Have an opportunity to tackle end-to-end simulation and autonomy behavior evaluation challenges across various areas of the autonomy system.
  • Lead, design, and develop critical simulation and offline testing engines and tools.
  • Create and extend software for world entities, adaptive behavior, pathfinding, road networks, computational mathematics, spatial queries, collision detection, vehicle control, vehicle dynamics, etc.
  • Example projects that a candidate may contribute to include:

-  Accelerating our efforts to automatically generate simulation scenarios, procedurally and data inspired, at massive scale, using analytical or learned techniques. 

- Accelerating our efforts to automatically evaluate autonomy behavior, with high precision, at massive scale. Drive quality-at-scale efforts for autonomy-behavior labels.

- Contributing to modeling real world errors in, and testing closed-loop interactions between, planning, localization, mapping, and control subsystems in simulation. 

Required Qualifications

  • Good development skills in C++, including modern C++ (11, 14, 17, 20)
  • Good sense of systems and data oriented design
  • Understanding of common software performance issues and design tradeoffs
  • Domain experience in simulation, motion planning, localization, controls, or other areas of robotics
  • BS or higher degree in robotics, computer science, software development, mathematics, or similar technical field of study, or equivalent practical experience
  • 5+ years of industry experience designing and programming C++ software
  • 5+ years of experience in autonomous vehicles, simulation, robotics, motion planning, localization, controls, computer vision or machine learning

Desirable Qualifications 

  • 10+ years of industry experience designing and programming C++ software
  • Good development skills in Python
  • Knowledge of linear algebra, computational geometry, or numerical methods
  • Excellent communication and people engagement skills
  • Mindset for ownership, growth, and a bias for progress
  • Customer orientation
  • Experience with rigid body simulation
  • Experience with automotive dynamics
  • Experience with Lie groups (modern geometry)
  • Experience at an autonomous vehicle company
  • Experience designing domain specific languages (DSLs)  
  • Experience with procedurally generated game or video content
  • Experience with machine learning (especially modern ML / transformers) applied to game or video content
  • Experience with labeling pipelines and label quality for computer vision, perception, or machine learning applications.
  • Experience with classical machine learning (ML) algorithms
  • Experience writing localization or runtime mapping (i.e. simultaneous localization and mapping, SLAM) software

The base salary range for this position is $189,000-$302,000 per year.  Aurora’s pay ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Within the range, the successful candidate’s starting base pay will be determined based on factors including job-related skills, experience, qualifications, relevant education or training, and market conditions. These ranges may be modified in the future. The successful candidate will also be eligible for an annual bonus, equity compensation, and benefits.

 #LI-KW1

#Mid-Senior

Working at Aurora

At Aurora, we bring together extraordinarily talented and experienced people united by the strength of our values. We operate with integrity, set outrageous goals, and build a culture where we win together — all without any jerks.

We have offices in several locations across the United States, where we encourage team and cross-functional collaboration. Aurora offers competitive medical, dental, and vision benefits, and additional healthcare support including medical transportation reimbursement, fertility, adoption, and surrogacy benefits. We empower our employees and their families with options to further their unique physical, mental, and financial well-being.

Our Learning and Development offerings include Aurora Academy, where our people learn, develop, and practice the essential skills that drive Aurora’s mission, continually up-leveling our team along the way. Our Careers page provides insight into career opportunities at Aurora, and you can find all the latest news on our Blog. 

Safety is central to everything we do. Every employee at Aurora has a role in contributing to safety, every step of the way. We seek candidates who take active responsibility, can contribute to building an atmosphere of trust, and invest in the organization's long-term success by working safely — no matter what.

We believe that self-driving technology has broad benefits – including increased access to transportation. To realize those benefits, we need a workforce with diverse experiences, insights, and perspectives — a workforce that reflects the communities our technology will serve.

Aurora is committed to providing access to anyone who seeks information from our website. We invite anyone using assistive technologies, such as a screen reader or Braille reader, to email us at [email protected]  if they experience difficulty using our website. Please describe the accessibility problem and include a URL (if available).

Aurora considers candidates without regard to their race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy status, parent or caregiver status, ancestry, political affiliation, veteran and/or military status, physical or mental disability, or any other status protected by federal or state law. Aurora considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. We are also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at [email protected]

For California applicants, information collected and processed as part of your application and any job applications you choose to submit is subject to Aurora’s California Employment Privacy Policy.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

At Aurora, every employee is empowered to take an active role in building an inclusive, collaborative, and unified culture that leverages our diverse strengths, perspectives, and backgrounds. 

Transforming how the world moves people and goods involves seeking to understand backgrounds, insights, and lived experiences that differ from our own. One way we accomplish that is with our 15 employee-led Aurora Unified Groups, which support diverse voices and drive inclusive collaboration. We believe that teamwork, belonging, and trust motivate and support our employees to do their best work. As our team grows, we strive to attract and retain exceptional talent that adds new perspectives and experiences and continues to drive innovation. Learn more on our Culture Page.

We are committed to helping qualified military community members leverage their talents in service of our mission. To understand how your military experience aligns with career opportunities at Aurora, review your military job classification at MyNextMove.org and consider applying for open positions corresponding to your identified skills and experiences!

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