Member of Technical Staff, Microsoft Robotics (Navigation)

• Develop algorithms that translate mission objectives, task assignments, spatial constraints, and robot state into safe, dynamically feasible trajectories for mobile robots, manipulators, or multi-robot systems.
• Integrate navigation and planning modules with localization, mapping, perception, control, simulation, and fleet operations systems to support end-to-end autonomy workflows.
• Build and improve real-time planning systems that operate under practical constraints such as limited compute, noisy sensors, dynamic obstacles, intermittent connectivity, and changing environmental conditions.
• Develop costmaps, traversability models, spatial constraints, route-planning logic, and safety-aware decision policies that enable robots to operate in human-populated and operationally complex environments.
• Use simulation, log replay, field testing, and automated regression suites to evaluate navigation performance, identify failure modes, and improve robustness across diverse scenarios.
• Collaborate with perception, spatial AI, simulation, platform, and field test teams to validate navigation behavior across real and simulated environments, ensuring consistent performance from lab development through deployment.
• Analyze robot telemetry, navigation logs, planner traces, and field test results to debug autonomy issues, tune planning parameters, and drive measurable improvements in success rate, safety, latency, and mission efficiency.
• Write production-quality software in Python, C++, or equivalent languages, following engineering best practices for testing, maintainability, observability, and operational readiness.
• Stay current with advances in robotics navigation, motion planning, model-predictive control, multi-agent planning, foundation models for robotics, and embodied AI, evaluating new techniques for adoption into Microsoft’s robotics platform.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 2+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
• OR equivalent experience.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 3+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
• OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 5+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
• OR equivalent experience.
• Experience developing navigation, motion planning, path planning, behavior planning, or control algorithms for autonomous mobile robots, manipulators, drones, autonomous vehicles, or other embodied robotic systems.
• Familiarity with robotics middleware and autonomy frameworks such as ROS/ROS2, Nav2, MoveIt, Drake, Autoware, or equivalent robotics software stacks.
• Experience with planning approaches such as A*, D*, RRT/RRT*, lattice planning, trajectory optimization, model-predictive control, or learning-informed planning.
• Experience integrating navigation systems with localization, mapping, perception, simulation, and robot control interfaces in real or simulated robotic platforms.
• Proficiency in C++ and Python with experience writing performant, maintainable software for real-time or near-real-time robotics systems.
• Experience debugging autonomy behavior using robot logs, telemetry, visualization tools, simulation replay, and field test data.
• Familiarity with navigation challenges in dynamic, human-populated, degraded, unstructured, or partially observable environments.
• Experience with simulation-based validation, scenario generation, autonomy benchmarking, or regression testing for robotics navigation systems.
• Familiarity with learning-based navigation, imitation learning for navigation policies, or foundation models applied to planning and decision-making.
• Understanding of safety-aware autonomy design, including collision avoidance, operational design domains, failure recovery, fallback behaviors, and human-in-the-loop intervention workflows.

Software Engineering IC3 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $102,100.00 - $202,200.00 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $133,800.00 - $219,200.00 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.