How to apply for Senior Software Performance Engineer

About May Mobility

May Mobility builds autonomous electric vehicles using its Multi-Policy Decision Making (MPDM) technology. The company is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and has given over 500,000 autonomous rides globally since 2017. It focuses on bridging public transit gaps and reducing congestion.

About the role

This role owns latency, throughput, memory utilization, and thread safety for the real-time decision-making pipeline. You will work with staff roboticists who write high-level autonomy logic. Your job is to profile the stack, enforce performance budgets, and build execution guardrails for deterministic, high-throughput execution.

A typical day

You might start by running profiling tools on the decision-making pipeline to find new bottlenecks. Then you would work with a roboticist to adjust code or set new performance guardrails. You could also review thread safety across modules and test deterministic execution under load.

Who May Mobility is looking for

• Experience profiling and optimizing real-time systems, especially C++ or similar languages used in robotics or embedded environments.
• Deep understanding of latency, throughput, memory, and thread safety in multi-threaded pipelines.
• Ability to set and enforce performance budgets and build guardrails for deterministic execution.
• Comfort working with roboticists and autonomy engineers who focus on high-level logic, not low-level performance.

Tips for this application

• Highlight any experience with real-time decision-making pipelines or autonomous systems, even if not in AVs.
• Quantify performance improvements you have delivered: latency reductions, throughput gains, memory savings.
• Mention specific tools you use for profiling (e.g., perf, VTune, Tracy) and how you enforce performance budgets.
• Reference May Mobility's MPDM technology and show you understand it is a decision-making framework, not just a driving system.
• Emphasize thread safety and deterministic execution experience, as these are core to the role.

What to cover in your cover letter

Focus on your hands-on work optimizing latency and throughput in real-time systems. Explain how you have built guardrails or enforced performance budgets. Show you can collaborate with roboticists who write high-level logic. Connect your work to May Mobility's goal of safe, deterministic autonomous decision-making.

Research before applying

• Read about May Mobility's Multi-Policy Decision Making (MPDM) technology and how it differs from traditional AV planning.
• Look up May Mobility's deployment cities and ride statistics to understand scale and real-world constraints.
• Find public talks or papers by May Mobility engineers on performance or decision-making.
• Check the company's recent news for updates on vehicle platforms or partnerships.

Likely interview topics

Based on the job description, expect questions about:

• How do you profile a real-time pipeline to find latency bottlenecks?
• Describe a time you enforced a performance budget and what tools you used.
• How do you ensure thread safety in a multi-threaded decision-making system?
• What is your approach to balancing memory utilization with throughput requirements?
• How would you work with roboticists who focus on high-level autonomy logic to improve performance?

Common mistakes to avoid

• Focusing only on general software performance without connecting to real-time or safety-critical systems.
• Ignoring the collaborative aspect: this role works with roboticists, not in isolation.
• Using vague claims like 'improved performance' without metrics or specific methods.