Systems Safety Engineer

Description

The company is building the largest swarming UAV and a highly adaptable network of swarming aircraft. It is close to launching the first aircraft built from the outset for swarming, along with command and control software that directs swarms of thousands of mixed autonomous units and lets human operators accomplish far more.

Leadership has founded and sold several startups, closed defense deals worth billions of dollars, and produced over 30 unconventional aircraft. Team members have previously worked at Scaled Composites, Airbus, Archer Aviation, Blue Origin, and Boom Supersonic.

The company builds large autonomous swarming UAS for large-scale operations in contested airspace. Safety is treated as an input to the design from the start. In this role you will build safety into the architecture, work alongside engineering teams to reduce hazards, and make sure aircraft degrade safely when something fails.

Responsibilities

• Carry out aircraft and system safety analysis, including SSA, FHA, FTA, CCA, and CMA.
• Set safety requirements and work with subsystem teams on architectural measures across avionics, flight control, propulsion, and power, such as failure containment, redundancy, and fault detection.
• Determine and justify development assurance level (DAL) assignments that guard against software design errors.
• Contribute safety inputs and findings to design reviews, test readiness reviews, and flight readiness reviews.
• Work with systems engineering on decisions that affect safety, including automatic takeoff and landing, airborne detect and avoid (DAA), and behavior when navigation or communications signals are lost.
• Prepare safety content for flight authorization packages and coordinate with airworthiness stakeholders as needed.
• Lead root-cause investigations and corrective action plans for safety issues found during analysis, simulation, integration, or testing.

Requirements

• At least 7 years of system safety work on aerospace, defense, or UAS programs.
• A solid grounding in systems engineering principles and practice.
• Hands-on experience performing SSA, FHA, and FTA on flight-critical systems.
• A strong grasp of failure mode classification, DALs, and safety architecture principles.
• Experience applying safety objectives to software development.
• Experience with ARP4761 and ARP4754.
• Experience with military safety standards and handbooks such as MIL-STD-882 and JSSSEH.
• Experience with civil software development standards such as DO-178 and DO-254.
• Ability to explain safety findings clearly to engineering, test, and program leadership.
• Familiarity with STAMP and STPA.
• Experience analyzing degraded-mode behavior and the safety effects of signal loss or adversarial conditions.

Conditions

US person status is required.

An active security clearance is required.

The role carries an ITAR requirement.

To comply with US government export regulations, you must be a US citizen, a lawful permanent resident of the US, a protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the US Department of State.

Benefits

• Meaningful equity in a fast-growing defense technology company.
• A competitive base salary based on your experience.
• Health coverage including medical, dental, and vision, plus a 401k.
• PTO and paid sick leave.
• A monthly wellness stipend.
• A catered lunch every day in the office.
• Paid parental leave.
• Work with direct impact on a critical national security mission.
• Colleagues who are engineers and operators tackling hard technical problems.