Startup Job / Mitgründer / Praktika: Behavior Planning Engineer

(m/w/d) -

rtup Full-Time Job

FERNRIDE is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging because we value and celebrate everyone's differences and individuality. We strive to create an open, safe space in which you feel empowered and authentic. FERNRIDE has 50 employees from 10+ countries. Our culture is characterized by the company values and fundamentals:

#wewinasoneteam #weexecuteanddeliver #weareambitiousinnovators #weareopentochange #weputcustomervaluefirst #respect #professionalism #safety.

What you will work on

You will shape the behavior planning architecture for Fernride’s unmanned vehicles across highly diverse Operational Design Domains (ODDs)—from structured tarmac roads to forest paths and fully off-road terrain. As part of the Motion Control and Planning team, you will define how vehicles decide what to do next, balancing safety, performance, robustness, and scalability.

The role sits at the intersection of classical motion planning, control, and emerging AI-based approaches, including end-to-end and learning-based systems and foundation models for complex reasoning. You will work closely with perception and vehicle platform teams to ensure that planned behavior is executable, explainable, and well-integrated with real vehicles.

How you will leave your footprint

• Design and evolve the behavior planning architecture for unmanned vehicles operating in very different and challenging ODDs
• Combine classical behavior and motion planning approaches with learning-based or foundation model-based planning, or end-to-end methods where they provide clear benefits
• Define clear interfaces between perception, planning, and control to ensure predictable and safe vehicle behavior
• Drive architectural decisions that balance performance, safety, and long-term maintainability
• Bridge the gap between research and production by evaluating, prototyping, and productizing AI-based planning solutions

What you will bring to the team

Required skills

• Strong background in motion planning or behavior planning for robotic or autonomous systems
• Experience building and deploying robotics or autonomous systems in real-world environments.
• Experience working across team boundaries, especially with perception and vehicle or robotics platforms
• Deep understanding of system behavior, failure modes, and safety considerations in autonomous systems
• Ability to reason about architecture, trade-offs, and long-term evolution of planning systems from modular to unified architectures
• Strong C++ skills with experience in performance-critical and real-time systems

Preferred skills

• Experience with learning-based planning, end-to-end networks, Vision-Language Models (VLMs), or other AI-driven behavior models
• Exposure to generative world models or a desire to apply transformer-based architectures to behavior & motion planning
• Hands-on experience with real vehicles or robots operating in unstructured or off-road environments
• Familiarity with simulation, validation, and performance evaluation of planning systems
• We recognize that the intersection of foundation models and behavior planning is a rapidly evolving field. Even if you don’t check every single box, we encourage you to apply if you have a strong foundation in one area and a proven hunger to master the other.

What we offer @ FERNRIDE

At FERNRIDE, we believe in empowering you to thrive both personally and professionally. Our benefits are thoughtfully designed to support your growth, well-being, and aspirations while fostering a strong sense of work-life harmony. Here’s how we support you:

• Flexible working hours & remote work
• All-day breakfast and unlimited drinks, fruits, and snacks
• Lunch subsidy
• Select one of three options: (1) EUR 40 Spendit card /month (2) Wellpass (3) Mobility card
• Corporate Benefits platform
• Company pension scheme
• Team, department, and company events
• 30 days of vacation
• Up to six weeks of remote work in countries covered under the EHIC (European Health Insurance Card)

Who we are

At FERNRIDE, we believe in a future where robotics unlocks human potential to create a better world. Yet today, humans still perform repetitive, risky tasks to keep our world running. These jobs, essential yet unattractive, should be performed by robots, which still fall short. We are on a mission to change that and transform critical industries through human-centric automation.

FERNRIDE delivers a comprehensive ground autonomy platform to offer scalable automation solutions across industries. They span from container terminals and yard operations via defence logistics to open-road trucking. By combining AI-powered autonomy with human oversight and modular, vehicle-agnostic hardware, we enable businesses and defence organizations to harness the full potential of automation, driving efficiency and safety.

FERNRIDE was founded in 2019 following 10 years of research at the Technical University of Munich and currently has 50 employees. We are setting the standard for autonomous logistics and advancing Europe’s technological sovereignty by delivering the first-ever fully certified autonomous trucking system in Europe in 2025.

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