Staff AV Safety Engineer - Human Factors (GPSSC)

Description

The team sits inside the global product safety organization and works to help the company deliver automated driving products people can trust.

The safety assurance group combines technical and operational expertise to support safe development, testing, launch, and ongoing improvement of automated driving systems.

The position reports into a function that spans safety, systems engineering, human factors, design, product, legal, regulatory, and external research.

Responsibilities

• Act as the technical lead for human factors across the design, development, validation, deployment, and operation of automated driving systems.
• Serve as the expert on how the automated system, the vehicle, and the driver or safety operator interact.
• Assess human performance, error, workload, attention, comprehension, trust, misuse, and automation limits, then turn them into safety requirements, design guidance, research plans, operational controls, and safety-case evidence.
• Work with safety, systems engineering, design, product, legal, regulatory, and outside research groups.
• Act as a recognized human factors safety expert, shape best practice, influence the AV safety strategy, and turn complex issues into clear conclusions and recommendations.
• Lead or support complex cross-functional hazard analyses covering driver-automation interaction, operator performance, human error, mode confusion, and loss of situational awareness.
• Derive traceable requirements, mitigations, validation activities, and operational controls from human factors hazard findings.
• Give safety direction on human-machine interface features, including modes, visual and non-visual alerts, escalations, driver monitoring, and driver displays.
• Judge whether the automated system supports understanding, attention, decisions, response, and recovery in normal, degraded, and failure conditions.
• Set your own research questions and methods, choose evaluation criteria, and turn results into safety requirements and best practices.
• Combine research, field and test-vehicle data, incident reviews, operator feedback, and industry evidence into benchmarks, thresholds, recommendations, and validation needs.
• Lead structured analysis of incidents, safety events, operational deviations, and emerging concerns to find human error causes and improve design, procedures, or training.
• Advise on operator training, qualification, fatigue management, and performance monitoring programs.
• Own or contribute to human factors safety-case claims and evidence, find gaps, assess change impact, and drive closure through reviews, audits, launch readiness, and assurance forums.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Human Factors, Systems Engineering, Industrial Engineering, or a related technical field.
• 10+ years applying human factors engineering to safety-critical transportation systems such as automotive, aviation, or marine.
• Proven experience analyzing how people interact with complex automation.
• Demonstrated skill leading or contributing to structured hazard analysis such as STPA, FTA, or FMECA.
• Experience turning human factors findings into safety requirements, design recommendations, operational controls, training guidance, or validation criteria.
• Experience planning, running, reviewing, or interpreting human factors research or human-in-the-loop studies.
• Ability to find human error causes in operational events, incidents, near misses, or operator performance using event data, video, telemetry, or anecdotal evidence.
• Strong technical writing, presentation, facilitation, and cross-functional communication skills, with the ability to frame unclear problems and defend decisions.
• Proven ability to build trust with stakeholders and influence across the organization.
• Preferred: Advanced degree in Human Factors, Systems Engineering, Industrial Engineering, or a related technical field.
• Preferred: Experience in the automated vehicle industry.
• Preferred: Experience working with research institutions, external vendors, or multidisciplinary academic and engineering teams.
• Preferred: Experience with functional safety, SOTIF, operational safety, safety management systems, safety cases, and other safety standards or frameworks.
• Preferred: Familiarity with requirements tools such as JAMA or DOORS.

Conditions

The role is remote, but if the selected candidate lives within a specific mile radius of a company hub, they must report to that location 3 times a week or at another frequency set by their manager.

Travel is required for this role, under 25% of the time.

The salary range for this role is $160,200 - 246,300. The actual base salary offered will depend on job-related factors and the selected candidate's location.

The compensation figures are a good faith estimate based on what a successful applicant might be paid under applicable state laws.

The company does not provide immigration-related sponsorship for this role. Do not apply if you will now or in the future need company immigration sponsorship, including employer-of-record filings or any work authorization that needs a written submission or other immigration support from the company, such as H-1B, OPT, STEM OPT, CPT, TN, or J-1.

The company is committed to unlawful discrimination-free hiring and to building an inclusive workplace.

Benefits

• Health and wellbeing programs including medical, dental, vision, Health Savings Account, Flexible Spending Accounts, retirement savings, sickness and accident benefits, life insurance, paid vacation and holidays, tuition assistance, an employee assistance program, and vehicle discounts.
• An incentive bonus based on company performance, job level, and individual performance.
• Relocation benefits for candidates who qualify under company policy.
• Company vehicle evaluation program after a successful motor vehicle report review, where you are assigned a company vehicle to drive and evaluate. Participants must buy or lease a qualifying company vehicle every 4 years unless a limited exception applies.