Senior Functional Safety Engineer

Senior Functional Safety Engineer

Houston, TX or Remote

Company Introduction

At Bot Auto, we are revolutionizing the transportation of goods with our cutting-edge autonomous trucks, enhancing the quality of life for communities around the globe. With the agility of a start-up and the wisdom of seasoned experts, Bot Auto boasts a team that has achieved numerous world-firsts and unparalleled innovations. United by a shared vision, we create miracles and propel the future of transportation. Join us and transform your dreams into reality.

About the Role

Bot Auto is seeking a Senior Functional Safety Engineer to help define, analyze, validate, and continuously improve the safety of our autonomous trucking platform. In this role, you will work across autonomy, vehicle platform, hardware, software, operations, validation, and fleet teams to ensure our autonomous driving system is designed, tested, and operated with rigorous safety principles. This role will focus heavily on the functional safety and redundancy designs of our next generation platform working with our hardware and infrastructure software systems team.

You will own and contribute to hazard analysis, safety requirements, safety case development, operational risk assessments, verification and validation evidence, and launch readiness reviews for Level 4 autonomous trucking operations. This is a high-impact role for an engineer who can bridge deep technical analysis with practical deployment needs in real-world freight operations.

What You'll Do

• Lead system safety analysis for Bot Auto's autonomous trucking platform, including autonomy software, vehicle controls, perception, planning, prediction, localization, compute, sensors, communications, fallback behavior, and operational processes
• Develop and maintain safety artifacts such as hazard analyses, functional safety concepts, technical safety requirements, safety cases, risk assessments, fault trees, FMEAs, STPA analyses, ODD assessments, and validation evidence
• Translate hazards and operational risks into clear, testable safety requirements for engineering, validation, operations, and fleet teams
• Partner internally with autonomy, software, hardware, vehicle integration, infrastructure, security, operations, and test teams to ensure safety requirements are implemented and verified
• Implement the Functional Safety Manager type of role for our autonomous vehicle platform working externally with suppliers, the distributed safety development/DIA, and tracking of functional safety case work products across tiered suppliers and integrators
• Support definition and refinement of the Operational Design Domain, including operating routes, environmental constraints, traffic conditions, vehicle behavior boundaries, fallback strategies, and minimum-risk maneuvers
• Evaluate safety impacts of new autonomy features, software releases, hardware changes, sensor configurations, operational procedures, and route expansions
• Drive safety reviews for on-road testing, driverless readiness, commercial operations, incident response, and post-event analysis
• Analyze logs, simulations, test results, disengagements, safety-driver interventions, fleet events, and edge cases to identify safety trends and improvement opportunities
• Define verification and validation strategies for safety-critical requirements across simulation, closed-course testing, structured road testing, shadow mode, and operational deployment
• Work with cross-functional teams to ensure traceability from hazards to requirements, implementation, test coverage, and safety-case evidence
• Contribute to safety governance, launch readiness criteria, change management, release approval processes, and operational safety metrics
• Support regulatory, customer, partner, insurer, and internal safety reviews as needed
• Promote a strong safety culture while enabling fast, disciplined engineering execution

What We're Looking For

• Bachelor's degree in Systems Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Robotics, Computer Science, Aerospace Engineering, Automotive Engineering, or a related technical field
• 7+ years of experience in systems safety, functional safety, autonomous vehicles, robotics, aerospace, automotive, heavy vehicles, safety-critical software, or complex cyber-physical systems
• Strong experience performing safety analyses such as HARA, FMEA, FTA, STPA, failure mode analysis, requirements decomposition, and risk assessment
• Experience developing or contributing to safety cases for safety-critical systems
• Strong understanding of autonomous vehicle system architecture, including perception, prediction, planning, control, localization, mapping, vehicle actuation, compute, sensing, and fleet operations
• Understanding of highly redundant, fault tolerant architectures and fail operational ADS and vehicle health management
• Familiarity with safety standards and frameworks such as ISO 26262, ISO 21448/SOTIF, UL 4600 Safety Case, SAE J3016/J3018, MIL-STD-882, IEC 61508, or similar safety-critical system standards
• Demonstrated experience with distributed development of safety systems and coordination of safety work products and safety case at automotive OEM and Tier 1 or similar OEM/integration level across system of systems and key elements
• Familiarity with emerging standards and best practices for road vehicles using physical AI and driven by ADS, such as AVSC Best Practices, SAE standards, and ISO PAS 8800
• Ability to convert ambiguous technical and operational risks into structured engineering requirements and actionable mitigations, arrive as a leader in your field ready to drive our AV safety readiness
• Experience working with verification and validation teams to define evidence needed to support safety claims
• Strong technical communication skills, including the ability to present risk decisions, tradeoffs, and safety arguments to engineering leaders and cross-functional stakeholders
• Comfort working in a fast-moving startup environment where safety rigor, execution speed, and practical deployment constraints must be balanced

Nice to Have

• Experience with autonomous trucks, commercial vehicles, robotics, AV operations, fleet operations, or on-road testing
• Experience with ISO26262 or similar safety audit and assessment process
• Experience supporting driverless launch readiness, route readiness, ODD expansion, or commercial autonomous vehicle deployment
• Experience analyzing vehicle logs, simulation results, scenario databases, disengagements, incidents, or safety-driver interventions
• Familiarity with trucking operations, FMCSA/DOT regulations, commercial vehicle safety, or heavy-duty vehicle systems
• Experience with requirements management and traceability tools such as JAMA, Polarion, DOORS, Confluence/JIRA, or similar
• Experience with Python, SQL, data analysis, log analysis, or scripting for safety metrics and validation evidence
• Experience with cybersecurity risk assessment, operational safety, incident response, or emergency response planning and automotive standard ISO21434 and UN ECE R155
• Advanced degree in engineering, robotics, safety engineering, or a related discipline

Key Success Measures

• Safety requirements are clear, testable, traceable, and aligned with system hazards
• Safety analyses are current, technically rigorous, and integrated into engineering and release decisions
• Safety-case evidence supports operational readiness decisions for new features, routes, and deployment milestones
• Cross-functional teams understand key hazards, mitigations, fallback expectations, and validation requirements
• Safety risks are identified early, communicated clearly, and resolved through practical engineering and operational controls
• AV vehicle architectures and risk assessment organized per ISO26262 and relevant safety standards with strong leadership across safety critical suppliers and delivered components and safety analyses

Who You Are

You are a systems thinker who can understand the full autonomous trucking stack—from sensors and autonomy software to vehicle actuation, operations, and real-world deployment. You are rigorous but pragmatic, comfortable challenging assumptions, and able to partner with fast-moving engineering teams without becoming a bottleneck. You care deeply about safety, but you also understand that safety engineering must produce actionable decisions, not just documentation. You can explain–even teach–complex topics in autonomy safety with clarity and to build support across multiple stakeholders and partners.