Responsibilities
- Lead the end-to-end safety case for collision avoidance on humanoid robotic platforms, covering hazard identification, risk assessment, validation, and ongoing field performance monitoring.
- Conduct comprehensive hazard analyses including HARA, STPA, FMEA, and fault tree evaluations for subsystems related to perception, motion planning, and actuation involved in collision prevention.
- Establish and verify safe operational boundaries such as minimum separation distances, detection zones, and timing or force constraints in shared human-robot spaces, adapting standards like ISO 13855 to humanoid-specific movement patterns.
- Apply SOTIF (ISO 21448) principles to uncover risks arising from perceptual gaps, edge cases, and unforeseen unsafe conditions, integrating findings into a structured scenario discovery and prioritization workflow.
- Specify safety-critical requirements for detecting and tracking objects and humans, predicting intent, and defining fallback strategies during sensor performance degradation or occlusion.
- Create functional and technical safety concepts and requirements tailored to collision avoidance capabilities.
- Formulate system behaviors for fail-safe and fail-operational modes, including responses during degraded functionality, minimal risk transitions, and safe interaction protocols with humans.
- Design and implement test cases to verify and validate the effectiveness of collision avoidance systems.
- Build, deploy, and utilize verification and validation tooling across hardware-in-the-loop, software-in-the-loop, and full-system integration levels.
- Support root cause analysis of incidents and near misses, using operational data to refine safety requirements and improve system resilience over time.
Compensation
Competitive salary and equity package commensurate with experience
Work Arrangement
Hybrid with flexible scheduling options
Team
Cross-functional robotics team focused on safety-critical system design and deployment
Qualifications
- Advanced degree in engineering, robotics, or a related technical field.
- Proven experience in functional safety standards such as ISO 26262, ISO 13849, or IEC 61508 applied to autonomous systems.
- Deep understanding of safety analysis methods including FMEA, FTA, STPA, and HARA.
- Experience applying SOTIF (ISO 21448) to real-world autonomous or robotic systems.
- Strong background in perception systems, sensor fusion, and uncertainty modeling in dynamic environments.
- Familiarity with humanoid robot kinematics and mobility challenges in unstructured settings.
- Proficiency in defining safety requirements traceable to system architecture and implementation.
- Experience developing test frameworks for safety-critical software at multiple integration levels.
- Ability to translate regulatory and standards-based guidance into practical engineering solutions.
- Excellent communication skills with cross-functional teams including software, controls, and hardware engineering.
Preferred Qualifications
- PhD in robotics, mechanical engineering, systems safety, or a closely related discipline.
- Industry experience with safety certification processes for commercial robots or autonomous vehicles.
- Hands-on experience with simulation tools for safety validation and scenario testing.
- Prior work on human-robot interaction safety in shared workspaces.
- Knowledge of international safety standards beyond ISO, such as UL or ANSI guidelines.
What You'll Work With
- Human-scale humanoid robots operating in complex, human-populated environments.
- Advanced perception stacks using cameras, LiDAR, radar, and IMUs.
- Real-time planning and control systems enabling dynamic motion and manipulation.
- Safety architectures designed for fail-operational redundancy and graceful degradation.
- High-fidelity simulation platforms for scenario generation and stress testing.
Available for qualified candidates
