Staff Software Engineer, Zoox
Simulation Traffic & Behavior Modeling
$210-300k
+ Amazon Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), and Zoox Stock Appreciation Rights
Office located in Foster City, CA
Autonomous vehicle technology
Open for applications
Autonomous vehicle technology
1001+ employees
Open for applications
$210-300k
+ Amazon Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), and Zoox Stock Appreciation Rights
Office located in Foster City, CA
1001+ employees
Company mission
To reimagine transportation from the ground up.
Role
Who you are
- Bachelors or Masters degree in Computer Science or related field
- 8+ years of experience in a related field
- Fluency in C++
- Mathematics skills, including trigonometry and linear algebra
Desirable
- Experience in game development, traffic simulation, motion planning, or pathfinding
- Experience in automotive, robotics, data science, or machine learning
- Familiarity with Python
What the job involves
- Simulation is essential to Zoox’s mission
- Zoox uses simulation to develop our driving software, validate safety, and analyze our real-world performance
- Our team’s work directly impacts how rapidly and successfully Zoox will achieve its goals
- For our simulators to successfully validate our autonomous driving stack, we need to realistically model and replicate the worlds we will be driving in
- This includes modeling and simulating human behaviors, specifically traffic and other pedestrian behaviors
- The challenge is that the simulated humans need to show realistic and representative behavior — we want our agents to jaywalk as a human might do, and also replicate a wide range of behaviors that we encounter while driving in real cities
- In this role, you will:
- Populate the simulated roads with intelligent participants
- Create simulated cars, pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists, etc. to behave realistically by default, and tunable to create a full gamut of traffic/agent behaviors
- Push the state of the art in traffic and behavior modeling to capture real-world behaviors as closely as possible
- Work closely with various teams — including AI software teams, QA, and Validation Engineers — to push autonomous driving forward
Our take
Zoox, a self-driving vehicle company, was founded to make personal transportation safer and more enjoyable for all. It has aimed to achieve this goal by creating a new mode of driverless transportation, thus eradicating the safety and logistical issues that come with human drivers.
It revealed its custom vehicle design in December 2020, showcasing something different from just a car without a driver. Uniquely, all four wheels are independent of one another, and the vehicles have no front or back, making them more agile than a standard car. Zoox claims that it is different from other industry players because it has created an entire driverless ecosystem, including the vehicle itself, allowing it to have more control.
The company is fast becoming a major player in an industry that is predicted to be worth $2 trillion by 2030. Electric motors are highly desirable, particularly in an urban environment, as governments look for ways to reduce emissions and improve air quality. Zoox is aiming to play a vital role in this evolution towards more sustainable urban mobility. Amazon acquired the company in 2020 and, despite a general downturn in the sector through 2022, is building a Zoox factory and budgeting $1 billion per year for future development and production.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 5 rounds)
Oct 2019
$200m
CONVERTIBLE
Jul 2018
$500m
SERIES B
Total funding: $1.2bn
Company benefits
- Paid parental leave
- Affinity groups and sports clubs
- Work from home opportunities
- Health insurance
- Our crew’s health and happiness is our first priority. We offer comprehensive health and mental health support, a wellbeing program, and unlimited and flexible paid time away
- We invest in our crew—and their families—for the long term. That includes generous family planning support, caregiver support, and strong cash compensation with great equity upside
- We look after our crew when they’re in the office too. Our famous food program is a great example, featuring a daily changing menu of local and sustainable dishes
- There’s a busy calendar of social events at Zoox, with more sports teams than you can count. And, of course, playing with robots is an important part of the job description
Company values
- WE'RE DOING ONE THING THAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING: Safer, cleaner, more enjoyable mobility—for everyone. One product and one mission, bringing us together and driving us forward.
- IT’S BIGGER THAN ANY OF US: Collaboration isn’t just something we talk about. It’s the only way we get this done. It takes trust, humility, and openness. And it means we pull together like no other team
- ONE ZOOX, ONE CREW: Zoox is an inclusive, diverse, supportive community. One where we celebrate together, face challenges together, and grow stronger together. And where we work hard to ensure no one is left out and everyone is part of the story.
- EVERY DAY IS A MILESTONE: From each line of code to each mile on the road, everything we do is another step forward in our mission. We ask questions, tackle problems head-on, and celebrate the progress we’re making
Company HQ
Vintage Park, Foster City, CA
Articles
Leadership
Aicha Evans
(CEO, not founder)Having studied at the George Washington University, Aicha started her career with 2 years in Engineering at Skyworks before joining Intel, where she spent over 11 years. She left her role as Corporate Strategy Officer in February 2019 to join Zoox as CEO.
Jesse Levinson
(CTO)Prior to co-founding Zoox, completed a Computer Science PhD at Stanford University. Also created Pro HDR, a million+ selling mobile photography app.
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