Software Engineer – Task & Motion Planning

About Us

At Pickle Robot, we're on a mission to automate global supply chains with Physical AI. Our robots work alongside warehouse teams to unload trucks and containers — one of the toughest, most understaffed jobs in logistics — making the work safer, faster, and more efficient for the people doing it.  Loading trucks comes next, followed by the Dill Autonomy Engine: generalized autonomy that will eventually orchestrate robots across entire logistics processes.

We're looking for a Software Engineer to join our Task & Motion Planning team, which decides what our robots pick, how they grasp it, and how they move safely and quickly through a cluttered, changing trailer. We're looking for someone who brings strong software engineering fundamentals, a track record of shipping production code, and a genuine interest in motion planning and grasping.

You'll design and build fast, reliable, well-tested planning systems that run on real robots every day. Your code will directly affect how many boxes come off a truck per hour and how often a robot needs a human's help, and you'll see those results on the warehouse floor.

What You'll Do

• Design, build, and maintain production C++ and Python components of our planning stack, including motion planning, grasp selection, collision checking, and task sequencing

• Take algorithms, your own and your teammates', from prototype to deployment, owning the architecture, performance, and robustness of the implementation

• Profile and optimize performance-critical code so planners meet real-time cycle-time targets on robot hardware

• Build the testing, simulation, and benchmarking infrastructure that lets the team change planning code with confidence

• Improve the reliability of the planning stack in the field by debugging failures from production logs, building tooling for triage, and fixing root causes

• Help raise the bar for code quality through design reviews, code reviews, and good engineering practices

What You'll Bring

• 2–4 years of experience writing and shipping production software, primarily in modern C++ (C++17 or later), with working proficiency in Python

• Strong fundamentals in software design, data structures, algorithms, and performance optimization

• Experience owning components end-to-end: design, implementation, testing, deployment, and ongoing support

• Solid understanding of concurrency, memory management, and profiling tools

• A real interest in motion planning, manipulation, and grasping, and eagerness to go deep on the algorithms alongside domain experts

• Comfort working close to hardware and debugging problems that span software and the physical world

Nice to Have

• Hands-on experience with motion planning or manipulation (e.g., sampling-based or optimization-based planners, trajectory generation, grasp planning)

• Experience with CUDA or GPU performance optimization

• Familiarity with robotics libraries and frameworks such as OMPL, Drake, FCL, or Pinocchio

• Background in 3D geometry, kinematics, or linear algebra (Eigen or similar)

• Experience with simulation environments and large-scale regression testing for robotics or other safety-critical systems

• Experience deploying software on physical robots in production environments

Pay at Pickle

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