Senior Software Performance Engineer

The company is transforming cities through autonomous technology to create a safer, greener, more accessible world. Based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, May develops and deploys autonomous vehicles (AVs) powered by our innovative Multi-Policy Decision Making (MPDM) technology that literally reimagines the way AVs think.

Our vehicles do more than just drive themselves - they provide value to communities, bridge public transit gaps and move people where they need to go safely, easily and with a lot more fun. We’re building the world’s best autonomy system to reimagine transit by minimizing congestion, expanding access and encouraging better land use in order to foster more green, vibrant and livable spaces. Since our founding in 2017, we’ve given more than 500,000 autonomous rides to real people around the globe. And we’re just getting started. We’re hiring people who share our passion for building the future, today, solving real-world problems and seeing the impact of their work. Join us.

Job Summary

As a Senior Performance Engineer on the Behavior Planning team, you will own latency, throughput, memory utilization, and thread safety for our real-time decision-making pipeline. Working alongside staff roboticists who write high-level autonomy logic, your job is to profile the stack, enforce performance budgets, and build execution guardrails that guarantee deterministic, high-throughput execution.

Prior background in autonomous vehicles, controls, or robotics math is not required . We are seeking engineers obsessed with system performance, low-level execution concepts, and software profiling tools.

Essential Responsibilities

• System Diagnostics: Instrument the behavior pipeline to measure runtime performance, isolating latency spikes, resource contention, and memory inefficiencies.

• Pipeline Optimization: Refactor high-frequency execution loops to maximize cache utilization, eliminate dynamic memory allocations, and reduce tail latency.

• Concurrency Architecture: Re-engineer thread boundaries and synchronization logic to maximize multi-core parallel processing while ensuring thread safety.

• Performance Guardrails: Build automated micro-benchmarks and runtime telemetry into CI/CD pipelines to prevent algorithm developers from introducing performance regressions.

• API Design: Partner with autonomy teams to establish performant, low-overhead C++ module interfaces for new behavioral features.

Required Qualifications

• Systems & Hardware Knowledge: Deep understanding of CPU cache hierarchies (L1/L2/L3), memory alignment, lock-free concurrency models, and Linux OS thread scheduling.

• Profiling & Diagnostic Tooling: Hands-on experience with Linux profiling toolchains (e.g., Perf, Tracy, eBPF) and dynamic sanitizers (ASan, TSan, Valgrind).

• C++ Engineering: Strong proficiency in modern C++ (C++17/20) with a focus on writing low-overhead abstractions, RAII, and cache-friendly data layouts.

• Benchmarking Methodologies: Familiarity with micro-benchmarking frameworks (e.g., Google Benchmark) and performance-regression testing in continuous integration.

• Domain Background: Experience in performance-critical software environments such as game engines, financial technology, database runtimes, or operating system kernels.

• Degree Requirement: B.S. Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or an equivalent degree.

Desirable Qualifications

• Academic Advancement: Master’s degree or PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field.

• Professional Depth: At least 5 years of professional experience.

• Domain Expertise: Prior experience in AV, robotics, or high-throughput real-time control systems.

• Advanced Process Ownership: Proven track record of designing and scaling automated CI/CD performance testing infrastructure.

Benefits and Perks

• Comprehensive healthcare suite including medical, dental, vision, life, and disability plans. Domestic partners who have been residing together at least one year are also eligible to participate.

• Health Savings and Flexible Spending Healthcare and Dependent Care Accounts available.

• Rich retirement benefits, including an immediately vested employer safe harbor match.

• Generous paid parental leave as well as a phased return to work.

• Flexible vacation policy in addition to paid company holidays.

• Total Wellness Program providing numerous resources for overall wellbeing

Don’t meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and/or people of color are less likely to apply to a job unless they meet every qualification. At the company, we’re committed to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workforce, so if you’re excited about this role but your previous experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification, we encourage you to apply anyway! You may be the perfect candidate for this or another role at the company.

Want to learn more about our culture & benefits? Check out our  website !

The company is an equal opportunity employer.  All applicants for employment will be considered without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, genetics or any other legally protected basis.   Below, you have the opportunity to share your preferred gender pronouns, gender, ethnicity, and veteran status with the company to help us identify areas of improvement in our hiring and recruitment processes. Completion of these questions is entirely voluntary.  Any information you choose to provide will be kept confidential, and will not impact the hiring decision in any way. If you believe that you will need any type of accommodation, please let us know.

Note to Recruitment Agencies:  the company does not accept unsolicited agency resumes. Furthermore, the company does not pay placement fees for candidates submitted by any agency other than its approved partners.

Salary Range

$160,000 — $180,000 USD

The company uses automated tools to support — but not replace — human judgment in our recruiting process, to find out more please click  here