Senior Software Engineer, Vehicle Experience
Zoox is building the future of transportation. To do that, we’re also building an incredible crew—united by our mission, energized by our values, and driven by our purpose. We are looking for an experienced Senior Software Engineer to join our Vehicle Experience team.
Zoox isn’t an updated car–it’s a whole new form of transportation–designed for AI to drive, and humans to enjoy. In this role, you will design, develop and optimize the software that powers a unique and premium vehicle experience to delight our riders.
The Vehicle Experience team is primarily responsible for the software that manages the ride state and orchestrates the rider experience–audio, lighting, vehicle controls and even the infotainment tablets. The on-vehicle software is authored in C++ and sits at the nexus of all the systems a rider sees and touches and as such, runs on the vehicle under resource constraints. This team delivers select features end-to-end, including writing backend cloud services.
The person in this role will be working on impactful projects like improving the vehicle mission handling as we add new autonomous capabilities, personalizing the vehicle experience to the rider’s preferences and providing situational awareness so the rider feels safe and informed, while consistently working to raise the performance, reliability and quality bar. In short, this position will be implementing and orchestrating some of the most highly visible features in-vehicle.
In this role, you will:
Design and implement software systems in C++ to manage autonomous vehicle ride states, passenger interactions and vehicle control interfaces while ensuring optimal performance on Linux systems.
Implement backend cloud features to support Vehicle Experience features end-to-end.
Architect and integrate mission-critical software components that process data from multiple vehicle sensors and systems, implementing robust error handling and failsafe mechanisms while adhering to automotive-grade safety standards.
Lead technical design reviews, establish coding standards and mentor junior engineers in best practices for embedded systems development, including memory management, and system optimization.
Analyze system performance metrics and telemetry data to optimize software efficiency, troubleshoot issues, and make data-driven decisions for improving ride management systems.
Partner cross-functionally with vehicle software teams, cloud engineers, Product Management, Technical Program Management, UX Design, Quality Assurance and Feature Integration teams to deliver integrated solutions that advance our autonomous vehicle technology.
Qualifications
MS/BS in Computer Science, Engineering or related field with 7+ years of software development experience
Strong expertise in modern C++ development on Linux systems and backend cloud systems
Experience with modern software development practices (Git, CI/CD, code review), automated testing and validation methodologies and cross-team collaboration in large, complex software projects
Excellent problem-solving skills with the ability to analyze requirements and propose technical solutions, document technical designs and decisions and debug complex system-level issues
Track record of building user-centric product software, collaborating with Product Management and UX designers and ability to translate UX requirements into technical implementations
Bonus Qualifications
Knowledge of robotics, automotive or embedded systems software development, including real-time constraints and hardware interfaces
Hands-on experience with Data Distribution Service (DDS) middleware in production environments, including performance optimization and fault tolerance
Proficiency with distributed systems in Java, Kotlin or Python