An innovative robotics company is seeking a Senior Robotics Engineer - Motion Planning to join their team in Woburn, MA. This is a full-time opportunity with a company reinventing automotive service through cutting-edge robotics. The company is developing automated tire changing and wheel balancing technology that combines advanced robotics, multi-axis motion systems, perception, and intelligent software to transform a process that has remained largely unchanged for decades.
This is a high-ownership opportunity for a robotics engineer who wants to be a primary technical driver for motion planning and control on a completely unique robotic platform. You’ll work directly with custom multi-axis hardware, solving challenging problems involving motion planning, collision avoidance, kinematics, trajectory optimization, and real-world robotic execution. As part of a small, highly capable team, you’ll have significant influence over technical direction, direct access to hardware, and the opportunity to take sophisticated robotics technology from prototype through real-world deployment. If you enjoy hands-on engineering, working close to the robot, and solving problems that don’t have an existing playbook, this role offers the opportunity to make a meaningful impact on a category-defining technology.
Required Skills & Experience
- Deep expertise in robotic motion planning algorithms, including sampling-based methods such as RRT and RRT*, probabilistic roadmaps (PRM), and trajectory optimization techniques such as CHOMP, STOMP, or TrajOpt
- 2+ years of hands-on experience with ROS 2 and MoveIt/MoveIt 2 in production or near-production robotic systems
- Strong understanding of robot kinematics, including forward and inverse kinematics for serial and parallel manipulators
- Hands-on experience with kinematic solvers such as KDL, TRAC-IK, or equivalent
- Strong understanding of collision avoidance, occupancy representations, voxel grids, OctoMap, and safety-aware motion planning
- Experience configuring and adapting URDF/SRDF models, planning scenes, planner interfaces, joint groups, and motion profiles
- Strong proficiency in C++ and/or Python within the ROS 2 ecosystem
- Understanding of real-time performance considerations, memory management, software architecture, and robotics software design patterns
- Proven ability to diagnose complex hardware/software integration issues, from high-level trajectory failures to low-level actuator constraints
- Experience developing production-grade robotic systems capable of reliable, fast motion planning under real-world constraints
- Experience working with dynamic obstacles, tight tolerances, and complex collision environments
- Experience with robotic simulation environments for development, testing, and validation
- Strong software engineering fundamentals, including writing clean, maintainable, well-tested code and documenting technical designs
Desired Skills & Experience
- BS, MS, or PhD in Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field
- Experience with the Pilz Industrial Motion Planner, OMPL, CHOMP, STOMP, or other industrial motion planning frameworks
- Background in automotive service equipment, industrial automation, manufacturing systems, or complex mechatronic platforms
- Experience with real-time trajectory execution and hardware-in-the-loop testing
- Experience with safety-rated motion control, safety interlocks, or other robotic safety systems
- Full-stack robotics experience spanning motor control, drive systems, hardware abstraction layers (HAL), and low-level firmware interfaces
- Experience integrating perception systems into reactive or perception-driven motion planning
- Familiarity with LiDAR, depth cameras, IMUs, point clouds, PCL, Open3D, SLAM, or object detection
- Experience deploying and debugging robotic systems in the field
- Experience working with multi-manipulator or multi-axis robotic systems operating in confined or highly constrained environments
- Experience optimizing robotic systems for fast, repeatable, production-ready operation
What You Will Be Doing Tech Breakdown
- 30% Motion Planning & Trajectory Optimization - Develop collision-aware motion planning using OMPL, RRT/RRT-Connect/PRM, Pilz, CHOMP, STOMP, TrajOpt, and other planning approaches
- 20% ROS 2 & MoveIt Development - Build and maintain ROS 2 nodes, MoveIt/MoveIt 2 configurations, planning scenes, URDF/SRDF models, planner interfaces, joint groups, and trajectory execution systems
- 20% Robotics Software & Controls - Develop software for actuator state feedback, joint state publishing, trajectory execution, motion control, and hardware interfaces
- 15% Kinematics, Collision Avoidance & Safety - Define kinematic constraints, velocity/acceleration limits, collision models, safety interlocks, and joint-specific motion profiles
- 15% Simulation, Testing & Field Deployment - Validate robotic behaviors in simulation, perform hardware-in-the-loop testing, debug production hardware, and optimize motion performance during field deployments
Daily Responsibilities
- 50% Hands-On Engineering - Write and review C++/Python code, develop motion planning algorithms, tune planners, debug trajectories, and optimize robotic performance
- 20% Hardware & Systems Integration - Work directly with robotic hardware, actuators, drives, sensors, and low-level interfaces to ensure reliable motion execution
- 15% Testing & Validation - Build simulation and validation workflows, test collision avoidance and trajectory execution, and ensure motion planning meets production requirements
- 15% Team Collaboration - Partner with perception, systems, hardware, firmware, and software engineers to define requirements, troubleshoot integration issues, and establish technical direction
