Zoox · Engineering

Staff / Senior Staff Software Engineer - Collision Avoidance System

Zoox is hiring for this role, hybrid in Foster City, CA. Posted November 4, 2026. You apply on Zoox's own site.

Apply on Zoox's siteAll Zoox jobs
  • $291K – $409KPay range
  • HybridWork arrangement
  • Full-timeJob type
  • SeniorLevel (from the title)

How the pay compares

The middle of this posting's range is $350K, 23% above the $286K median for Software Engineer at AI Companies roles across 680 open AI postings that show pay.

Software Engineer at AI Companies salary data

About the job

From Zoox's job posting. Check the original for the latest details before applying.

The Collision Avoidance System (CAS) is Zoox's independent safety layer. It runs alongside our main autonomy stack, constantly watches for imminent collisions, and reacts within milliseconds to prevent or reduce them. By using different methods and data paths than the main stack, CAS gives our robotaxi a second, diverse line of defense in the most challenging dense urban environments.

As a Staff or Senior Staff engineer, you will be the technical lead for CAS algorithms, with a focus on CAS perception. You will shape how CAS sees the world, combining interpretable geometric methods with machine learning, and you will own the architecture and roadmap that take these capabilities from idea to safe, real-time deployment on our fleet. Your work will directly affect the safety of every rider and road user around our vehicles.

In this role, you will:

  • Serve as the technical lead and architect for CAS perception, defining how lidar, radar, and camera data become reliable obstacle detection, tracking, and collision-risk estimates under tight latency and compute budgets
  • Design, implement, and ship both machine learning and classical perception algorithms (e.g., point-cloud geometry, ground estimation, clustering, state estimation and tracking, learned detection and segmentation, sensor fusion) in production-quality, safety-critical C++
  • Own the end-to-end CAS algorithm architecture and multi-release technical roadmap, making clear trade-offs between safety, performance, latency, compute, and ML vs. non-ML approaches
  • Partner across CAS perception, behavior and planning, and validation to define interfaces, requirements, metrics, and evaluation strategies that show the system is safe and ready to launch
  • Work with sensor, system performance, safety strategy, and main autonomy teams to drive cross-team technical decisions, while mentoring engineers and raising the technical bar across CAS

Qualifications

Bonus Qualifications

Apply on Zoox's site

Similar roles

More engineering jobs at AI companies.

New to AI? Show employers you know it with a free AI certificate.