Functional Safety Lead (IEC 61508)

Role summary

The organization's commercially deployed humanoids operate alongside teams in warehouses, manufacturing facilities, and distribution centers—tackling physically demanding and repetitive tasks while enabling workers to focus on higher-value work. With industry-leading safety standards and years of proven deployment data, we're pioneering a new era of automation that enhances human potential.

Responsibilities

The organization is seeking a Principal Robotics Functional Safety Engineer to help lead our safety strategy. This is a high-impact role for an engineer who wants to shape the safety of complex robotic systems from architecture through deployment, and to help set functional safety direction across the broader engineering organization, not just a single product line.

We don't think of the organization as only a robotics company. We're proving out what it means to be a safety-of-robotics company, a robotics company and a software company in equal measure, and this team sits at the center of that identity.

You'll partner with a functional safety team of diverse backgrounds and collaborate closely with hardware, software, controls, perception, and systems engineering to ensure safety is embedded in every phase of development and verified in the field. Depending on team needs and your strengths, this role may involve deep technical ownership of a specific safety domain, direct support for customer deployments, or helping represent the organization's safety approach in external technical settings.

• Lead functional safety efforts from concept through deployment, including compliance with the machinery directive, ISO 13849, IEC 62061, IEC 61508, and applicable mobile robot standards such as ANSI/RIA R15.08.
• Drive architecture-level safety decisions across current and next-generation robotic platforms, balancing real-world performance, technical risk, and compliance.
• Create and maintain core safety deliverables: risk assessments, safety requirement specifications (SRS), FMEDA, SISTEMA analyses, validation plans, and safety cases.
• Collaborate cross-functionally to define, communicate, and validate safety-critical requirements for hardware, embedded software, and control systems.
• Support customer deployments through remote collaboration and on-site visits, ensuring safe and compliant integration in dynamic environments.
• Oversee third-party vendors and labs for verification and validation (V&V) activities, including work supporting CE marking and other regulatory certifications.
• Coordinate with the compliance team on electrical safety, hazardous materials, and environmental/radio regulations (e.g., NFPA 79, IEC 60204-1, REACH, RoHS, FCC).
• Help design and validate functional safety architecture for AI and ML enabled features, ensuring their behavior stays within defined safety limits.
• Communicate safety strategy, risks, and requirements clearly across technical and non-technical audiences, including customers and engineering leadership.
• Monitor the evolving regulatory and standards landscape relevant to mobile and humanoid robotics, and help evolve internal safety processes accordingly.
• Partner with engineering and safety leadership to shape functional safety strategy and priorities across the broader product portfolio, taking ownership of safety outcomes that span multiple teams and programs.
• Mentor engineers across the functional safety team and contribute to growing its technical depth and capacity.

Depending on interests and business needs, this role may also include opportunities to represent the organization's safety perspective externally through technical publications, conference participation, or engagement with relevant standards committees. These are opportunities that may be available, not a required or guaranteed part of the role.

Requirements

• BS in Robotics, Mechatronics, Electrical Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
• 12+ years in robotics or safety-critical engineering, including 7+ years focused on functional safety.
• Proven expertise in traditional risk reduction methods and application of the hierarchy of controls.
• Deep familiarity with functional safety lifecycle practices and deliverables aligned with ISO 13849, IEC 61508, or similar frameworks.
• Familiarity with applicable safety standards for mobile and industrial robots, including ANSI/RIA R15.08 and the ISO 10218 series.
• Experience managing third-party vendors or labs for V&V activities to ensure compliance, quality, and traceability.
• Hands-on experience with safety design and implementation for mobile, dynamic, or collaborative robotic systems.
• Proven ability to coordinate across engineering teams to define, validate and test safety requirements.
• Experience with safety analysis tools such as SISTEMA.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to advocate for safety in technical decision-making.

Nice to have

• TUV Functional Safety Engineer certification or equivalent.
• Experience with safety firmware implementation (fault handling, safe-state logic).
• Experience supporting or leading field deployment of robotic systems, including customer interaction, on-site troubleshooting, configuration, or validation.
• Prior involvement in CE marking and regulatory certifications.
• Familiarity with SOTIF (safety of the intended functionality, ISO 21448), ISO/IEC TS 22440 (AI functional safety), and ISO/IEC TS 25223 (uncertainty quantification in AI systems), and their application to perception, autonomy, or other AI/ML-enabled systems.
• Deep experience with industrial mobile robot (IMR) safety, including traditional risk reduction methods and safety-rated devices (e.g., E-stops) aligned with ANSI/RIA R15.08.
• Curiosity about safety challenges in dynamically stable or legged robotic systems, even without direct prior experience.
• Advanced degree (MS/PhD) in Robotics, Mechatronics, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
• Prior involvement in standards development or industry working groups is a plus, but not required.
• Experience mentoring and growing senior or staff-level engineering talent.
• This is a hybrid position based out of our Fremont office.
• Time Off
• Work Environment: A culture that supports flexible work arrangements.
• Annual Discretionary Bonus: Provided for eligible roles.

All of our roles are U.S.-based. Applicants must have current authorization to work in the United States.