Software Engineer (Decision Making)

Oxford, England, United Kingdom

Description

Who are we?

Oxa is enabling the transition to self-driving vehicles through an initial focus on the most commercially advanced sector; the autonomous shuttling of goods and people.

We are home to some of the world’s leading experts on autonomous vehicles, creating solutions such as Oxa Driver, equipping vehicles with full self-driving functionality; Oxa MetaDriver, using Generative AI to accelerate and assure the safety of deployments; and Oxa Hub, a set of cloud-based offerings for autonomous fleet management. Our technology is being deployed across the UK and the U.S, and we’re partnering with a fast-growing ecosystem of operators, vehicle OEMs and equipment makers serving autonomous transportation globally as it advances.

Based in Oxford, and with offices in Canada and the U.S, Oxa was founded in 2014 and is growing rapidly (350+ ‘Oxbots’ to date). Our purpose is to change the way the Earth moves, through an uncompromising focus on safety, efficiency and explainability of our AI approaches. The company has attracted $225 million from leading investors so far, with $140 million raised in the last Series C funding round in January 2023.

Your Team

You will join our Planning Team, where we design, implement, test and deploy the Engine that drives the behaviour of Oxa’s Autonomous Vehicles (AVs), based on our understanding of our environment.

Your Role

As a Software Engineer in Decision Making, you will be responsible for designing, implementing, testing, and deploying algorithms that realise the desired behaviours that the AV needs to exhibit in any particular scenario. Specifically, this role will focus on Behaviour/ Manoeuvre Planning and Selection in the presence of other actors with uncertain future actions. You will work closely with Prediction and Trajectory Planning to scalably elicit predictable, explainable behaviours in the AV.

In This Role, You Will

Contribute to the development, integration, and deployment of algorithms that enable AVs to navigate complex on-road environments.

Develop the Engine that reasons over discrete actions and interactions with other actors, based on multi-hypothesis predictions

Collaborate with the Routing team to incorporate longer-term and higher-level mission objectives

Collaborate with the Trajectory Planning team to realise the actions and select the particular discrete action to be executed

Create appropriate metrics and tools to measure and benchmark the performance of planning algorithms deployed in various environments.

Contribute significantly to the engineering lifecycle, including scoping, design, implementation, testing, deployment, and maintenance of your team's work.

Document your team's work, focus on improving features, and understand the business and customer value of your team's work.

Contribute to hiring and onboarding at scale through interviewing and engaging in recruiting outreach for your team.

Requirements

What you need to succeed:

MS in related field (Mech Eng, Aerospace, Comp Science, Robotics, Mechatronics) is desired

BS in related field (Mech Eng, Aerospace, Comp Science, Robotics, Mechatronics) with 1+ years of professional experience is acceptable

Exposure to Behaviour Planning, Decision Making and/or Trajectory Planning, preferably in Self Driving

An understanding of Robotics Fundamentals, including:

Robotics architectures

2D/3D Geometry & transformations

Mechanics, kinematics, and dynamics

Probability handling and uncertainty representation

An understanding of trajectory optimisation techniques

Modern C++ algorithm development and deployment, ideally in a production environment (including STL and common testing frameworks)

Extra Kudos

A proven track record of independent development and delivery

Exposure to automated decision making (e.g., voting schemes, lexicographical ordering, etc).

Experience with Machine Learning

Understanding of POMDPs (algorithm/ formulation)

Exposure to Game Theory

Experience with formal logic (e.g. temporal logic)

Exposure to safety certification standards and processes

Proven agility in fast-changing environments. As a scale-up, we’re constantly evolving so our people need to evolve too for us to succeed together.

A customer-centric outlook. Chances are you won’t be directly customer facing, but we value people who anticipate and prioritise the needs of our customers. We call it ‘inventing on their behalf.’

The Candidate Journey: Multi-Step and Two-Way

No-one wants to feel like a square peg in a round hole, so this process is designed to give you every chance to get the measure of us, and us of you. The various stages give you every opportunity to show your unique strengths and qualities, and enables each of us to establish if we’re a good fit for the other. If the fit is good and you’re selected, you’re then in a position to do great work and thrive, which is what everyone wants.

Benefits

We provide:

Competitive salary, benchmarked against the market and reviewed annually

Company share programme

Hybrid and/or flexible work arrangements

An outstanding £3,000 flexible benefits including private medical insurance, critical illness coverage, life assurance, EAP, group income protection

Funded relocation support

A salary exchange pension plan

25 days’ annual leave plus bank holidays

A pet-friendly office environment

Safe assigned spaces for team members with individual and diverse needs

Our Culture

We believe that diversity of thought and experience is a key driver of innovation. It also makes life, and work, more interesting. So ours is a culture that celebrates humanity in all its diversity and richness, and uses difference as fuel to grow and succeed together. Everyone is welcome, everyone has a voice, everyone is valued. And our work and people are all the better for it.

Learn more about our culture here.

Why become an Oxbot?

Our team of experts in computer science, AI, robotics and machine learning is world-class, and together they’re solving the most exciting and important technological challenges of our times.

But as well as smarts, Oxbots have heart. Our diverse, multi-cultural crew is guided by a shared vision to bring the myriad benefits of autonomy to our customers and partners. And in a company that celebrates uniqueness as much as skill and experience, they do it with energy, conviction and a healthy dose of excitement, too.

If you are bold, creative and hyper skilled, come and create the future of autonomy with us at Oxa.