Senior System Safety Engineer

Role summary

The Senior System Safety Engineer is a hands-on technical leader responsible for identifying and reducing

electrical, mechanical, and environmental risks in in-line inspection tools and associated equipment. This is a product-level engineering role, not a general EHS or workplace safety role.

The engineer will perform safety-related design reviews, make design recommendations, support test planning, review test results, and communicate system risk, unresolved assumptions, and residual risk to management.

This role operates as a product-safety function with cross-disciplinary review responsibility. It should not be embedded under a discipline-specific design manager whose team owns the designs being reviewed.

The role informs risk acceptance but does not accept product risk on behalf of the company.

The role requires independent judgment, clear communication, and practical risk-based decisions grounded in sound engineering principles, accepted practices, and applicable standards.

Responsibilities

• Establish and maintain a formal safety evaluation process for tool design.
• Develop and maintain documented safety rationales for the Company inspection tools.
• Facilitate hazard analyses such as FMEAFailure Modes and Effects Analysis: a bottom-up method cataloging how components fail and what effects those failures produce. Read more, fault-tree analysis, and related system safety activities.
• Define and document credible threats, including the basis for excluding severe consequences from further analysis.
• Identify applicable safety standards and accepted engineering practices.
• Review mechanical, electrical, and control-system designs and make recommendations to achieve safety goals set by executive management.
• Work with design and test teams to ensure safety recommendations are incorporated and verified.
• Manage and technically review safety-related supplier or contractor work.
• Communicate safety-case status, unresolved assumptions, verification gaps, mitigation options, and residual risk to design teams and executive management.
• Operate effectively where standards, field history, operating conditions, and business needs do not produce an obvious answer.
• Identify missing information and close safety-critical gaps through analysis, test, supplier input, or expert review.
• Make timely, defensible recommendations with incomplete data while stating assumptions, uncertainty, severity, likelihood, and residual risk.
• Help the team avoid unsupported assumptions, excessive debate, premature optimization, and controls that do not materially reduce risk.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering or a closely related technical field.
• 8+ years of experience in electrical engineering, product safety, functional safety, compliance engineering, certification engineering, or safety-critical product development.
• Experience applying structured safety methods to complex engineered products, systems, or equipment.
• Working knowledge of hazard analysis, risk reduction, safety requirements, verification planning, validation evidence, and residual-risk communication.
• Working knowledge of functional safety or safety-related control concepts, such as ISO 13849, IEC 61508Functional Safety of E/E/PE Safety-Related Systems. The umbrella functional safety standard defining the safety lifecycle, SILA discrete level (SIL 1 to SIL 4) specifying the required risk reduction and dependability of a safety function under IEC 61508 and its sector standards. Read more levels, and requirements for electrical, electronic, and programmable systems. Read more, IEC 62061Safety of Machinery - Functional Safety of Control Systems. Machinery-sector implementation of IEC 61508 for safety-related electrical control systems. Read more, or similar safety lifecycle/safety integrity frameworks.
• Familiarity with hazardous-location, explosive-atmosphere, or ignition-risk concepts as applied to electrical or electronic equipment.
• Strong understanding of DC power distribution, batteries, current limiting, fusing, protection circuits, stored energy, fault currents, and thermal effects.
• Ability to review schematics, PCB layouts, cable and connector drawings, enclosures, BOMs, test data, and safety documentation.
• Ability to evaluate whether design assumptions, protection methods, and verification evidence adequately support the intended safety claim.
• Ability to clearly communicate with both technical and management audiences.
• System-level, evidence-based safety thinking.
• Mechanism-based risk analysis across electrical, mechanical, and environmental interfaces.
• Practical interpretation of standards and certification expectations.
• Strong technical judgment, clear documentation, communication under uncertainty, and balanced decision-making across safety, function, cost, schedule, manufacturability, and field practicality.

We thank all applicants for their interest; however, we will contact only those selected for an interview.

Nice to have

• Direct experience designing electrical or electronic equipment used in hazardous locations.
• Experience with lithium battery packs and BMS/protection circuits.
• Working knowledge of hazardous-location requirements, including how electrical equipment is evaluated for use in flammable or explosive atmospheres.
• Experience preparing or reviewing safety documentation, including design rationale, verification evidence, test results, and residual-risk summaries.