Senior Software Engineer (Manipulation)

About this role

Job Description

General Motors is reimagining automation at economy scale to make manufacturing more competitive in the USA. 

You are a Senior Software Engineer who has deep experience in building manipulation planning and control libraries. The work covers collision-free motion generation, trajectory optimization, and the execution layer that turns a planned motion into repeatable movement on real arms. 

The target applications are C++, Python, and ROS 2 on FANUC arms and mobile manipulators, under cycle time and reliability requirements. You have the taste to see important problems, the talent to build great solutions and the grit to get it done. 

This role sits in the core robotics team and works alongside controls and perception engineers. 

The Opportunity

• Build and own manipulation planning capability: collision-free planning, trajectory optimization, and time parameterization.

• Implement and tune planners for the target applications, with cycle time as a first-class requirement.

• Build the collision environment representation from perception output and static scene models.

• Implement Cartesian and constrained motion planning for approach, grasp, and place phases.

• Handle the mobile manipulation cases: planning with base placement, redundancy resolution, and whole-body motion.

• Build the execution layer that monitors trajectory tracking and reacts to deviation and contact.

• Define the interface between perception, planning, and control, and keep it clean as the system grows.

• Diagnose planning failures from field data and turn them into regression cases.

The Job Requirements

Experience

• 6+ years of professional engineering experience, with 2+ years in motion planning or manipulation.

• Experience deploying manipulation planning on physical arms in a production or field setting.

• Experience meeting a cycle time requirement, not only a feasibility requirement.

Education

• M.S. degree or hi...