Functional Safety Manager

Job Title: Functional Safety Manager

Location: Southfield, MI 48076 (100%On-Site)

Duration: 6 months

Skills: EIS : Functional Safety ISO 26262

Experience Required: 10 & Above

Primary responsibilities:

Functional safety management and governance

Develop, tailor, maintain and drive the project functional safety plan, including lifecycle activities, work products, milestones, roles, dependencies, reviews, audits and assessments.

Define the Development Interface Agreement or equivalent responsibility model across OEM, Tier-1, semiconductor, software and engineering-service partners.

Establish project safety governance, review cadence, decision rights, escalation paths, evidence expectations and approval gates.

Monitor functional safety progress, quality, open findings and delivery risk; provide concise status reporting to program and engineering leadership.

Coordinate confirmation reviews, functional safety audits and functional safety assessments with the required level of independence.

Ensure competence management, resource planning and role clarity for safety-related activities.

Govern safety impact analysis for changes, defects, deviations, re-use, carry-over elements and variant introduction.

Maintain the safety case strategy and assure that claims, arguments and evidence remain complete, consistent and configuration controlled.

Required qualifications and experience

Minimum qualifications

Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Systems Engineering or a related discipline. A master's degree is preferred.

Typically 10+ years of automotive embedded-system development experience, including substantial functional safety responsibility and at least 3 years in a technical lead, safety manager or equivalent coordination role.

Demonstrated working knowledge of ISO 26262:2018, with strong applied depth in Parts 4, 5 and 6 and good understanding of Parts 2, 3, 8 and 9.

Experience managing safety activities for ASIL-rated systems and coordinating work products across system, hardware and software teams.

Hands-on experience with safety requirements, safety architecture, safety analyses, verification planning, traceability, change impact analysis and safety-case evidence.

Experience participating in or preparing for functional safety reviews, audits or assessments.

Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex safety matters to engineering teams, suppliers, customers and leadership.

Essential technical competencies (Competency area --Expected depth -Illustrative evidence)

ISO 26262 Parts 4, 5 and 6 --Expert -Has led or assured system, hardware and software safety work products across a production program.

Functional safety management --Advanced -Owned safety plan, interfaces, governance, milestones, confirmation measures and escalations.

Safety requirements and architecture --Expert -Converted safety concepts into allocated technical, hardware and software safety requirements and mechanisms.

Safety analysis --Advanced -Led or reviewed FMEA, FTA, FMEDA, DFA and ASIL decomposition / independence considerations.

Verification and validation --Advanced -Defined safety verification strategy, acceptance criteria, traceability and evidence across integration levels.

Automotive embedded systems --Advanced -Understands ECUs, microcontrollers, sensors, actuators, networks, diagnostics, real-time software and interfaces.

ALM and configuration control --Advanced -Uses requirements, test, defect, baseline and change-management tools to maintain a defensible digital thread.

Leadership and stakeholder management --Expert -Drives decisions across organizational and supplier boundaries while maintaining objective safety assurance.

Added advantage: ADAS and automated-driving domain

DESIRABLE DOMAIN EXPERIENCE

Knowledge of ADAS and automated-driving architectures is an added advantage, particularly where functional safety must be coordinated with perception, sensor fusion, localization, planning, control, vehicle networks and degraded-operation strategies.

Understanding of camera, radar, lidar, ultrasonic and vehicle-motion sensor interfaces and common failure modes.

Familiarity with ADAS domain controllers, centralized compute, sensor fusion, vehicle control and fail-operational or degraded-operation concepts.

Awareness of the relationship between ISO 26262 functional safety, ISO 21448 SOTIF, cybersecurity engineering and AI/ML safety considerations.

Experience with scenario-based validation, SIL, MIL, HIL, vehicle testing, fault injection, data replay or large-scale test evidence for ADAS functions.

Understanding of operational design domain, perception limitations, fallback strategies, driver interaction and safety monitoring.