Staff Systems Safety Engineer

Description

The company is building humanoid robots, starting with its Apollo robot for manufacturing and logistics, with later uses in healthcare and the home.

The team is taking the robot to market at scale and working through safety, commercialization and mass production.

You will be the lead technical authority for the safety of the humanoid robots, from early concept through customer deployment.

You will write the system safety architecture and safety case, and lead the engineers who handle hazard analysis, safety functions and deployment safety, so the case holds up with customers and assessors.

Responsibilities

• Lead the systems safety engineers from hazard analysis and safety requirements through site risk assessment and commissioning, own the technical quality of their output, and support first on-site customer deployments.
• Set the safety team's technical direction, review its work, and coach and mentor engineers, including giving input on hiring. Keep day-to-day priorities aligned with long-term goals.
• Write the system-level safety architecture, including AI, and the functional safety concept. Drive architecture decisions across current and next-generation platforms, weighing performance, technical risk and compliance.
• Make the final technical call on safety trade-offs, residual risk, component and architecture choices, and conflicts between safety and product goals.
• Write and maintain the safety case, making sure evidence from software, hardware, AI, user safety and deployment is complete, consistent and traceable. Include the SOTIF argument for hazards that occur without a fault.
• Run system-level safety analyses such as system fault trees and common-cause failure analysis. Lead detailed design reviews of safety-critical subsystems and personally take on deliverables where the team is short.
• Define the safety lifecycle, including the AI safety lifecycle under ISO/IEC TS 22440, the SOTIF process under ISO 21448, safety engineering methods, and the technical criteria for design reviews, safety gates and SOTIF residual risk acceptance.

Requirements

• You have led functional or system safety hands-on for complex robotic, machinery or autonomous products from concept through deployment, including writing safety architectures and safety cases.
• You have deep experience in hazard analysis and risk assessment, the hierarchy of controls, safety function definition and the safety lifecycle under IEC 61508, IEC 62061, ISO 13849 and ISO 12100.
• You know robot and machinery safety standards such as ISO 10218, ANSI/A3 R15.06, ANSI/A3 R15.08 and ISO 25785-1, and have worked on robot safety at customer sites.
• You have led and mentored safety engineers across hardware, software and system topics.
• You have built a safety case and worked with notified bodies, NRTLs or third-party assessors.
• You understand the safety of AI and ML-enabled systems, including ISO/IEC TS 22440 and SOTIF (ISO 21448), and have used requirements tools such as JAMA.
• You communicate well with executives, think strategically, and can make and defend risk-based decisions.
• You hold a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, systems engineering, robotics, computer engineering or a related field, or have equivalent experience. A master's is preferred.
• You have 12+ years of relevant experience, including 7+ years in functional or system safety with substantial responsibility for complex robotic or electromechanical products and prior technical leadership of a safety team.
• A certification as a functional safety expert or professional, such as from TÜV or exida, is preferred.
• Physical demands: long periods of sitting at a desk working on a computer, occasionally lifting 15 pounds, reading printed material and screens, and hearing and speaking to communicate.

Conditions

This is a direct hire role. Outside agency submissions are not accepted.