Safety Coordinator / Lab Lead

United States Digital Space LLC; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 134,000 - 168,000; Full time

Job summary

Scale is seeking a Safety Coordinator / Lab Lead in San Francisco to anchor our physical testing operations. You will own safety audits, incident documentation, root-cause analysis, and risk mitigation across robotics hardware and labs.

You'll lead daily lab operations, asset management, and cross-functional coordination with hardware and software teams, while building a strong safety culture and onboarding for new researchers and partners in a fast-paced environment.

Qualifications

• Experience: 3+ years of experience in lab management, safety coordination, or technical operations within a high-velocity robotics, aerospace, automotive, or autonomous vehicle R&D environment.
• Safety Protocols: Demonstrated experience building out structured audit workflows and detailed incident documentation pipelines (familiarity with OSHA standards or ISO robotics safety standards is highly valued).
• Technical Comfort: Ability to seamlessly navigate an environment featuring complex physical hardware, multi-modal sensors, and advanced compute rigs.
• Communication & Drive: Exceptional written communication skills for documentation, with the assertive communication style required to enforce safety protocols across a brilliant, fast-moving engineering team.

Responsibilities

• Design, schedule, and execute routine safety audits across all physical testing environments and hardware workspaces.
• Own the end-to-end incident management pipeline, documenting, archiving, and analyzing lab incidents and near-misses.
• Lead structured post-incident RCA investigations and implement CAPAs.
• Track safety metrics and audit trends to mitigate hazards across facilities.
• Develop standard safety practices and documentation for multiple facilities.
• Manage daily lab operations, layout, organization, and upkeep of testing arenas.

Skills

Safety coordination

Lab management

Technical operations

Communication

Tools

OSHA standards knowledge

ISO robotics safety standards

Job description

At Scale, we believe that the next frontier of artificial intelligence is embodied. The Physical AI team is focused on building general AI that can reason and act in the physical world. By leveraging Scale’s massive, industry-leading data infrastructure, we are partnering with frontier labs to build Foundation Models for Physical AI that will redefine the future of automation.

To support our rapid hardware-software iteration cycles and ensure a world-class R&D environment, we are looking for a Safety Coordinator / Lab Lead to anchor our physical testing operations.

Role Overview

As the Safety Coordinator / Lab Lead, you will play a mission-critical role in scaling our physical testing infrastructure safely and efficiently. This is a high-impact position where your highest-priority responsibility will be owning the end-to-end execution of safety audits and incident documentation.

Operating at the intersection of cutting-edge AI foundation models and complex robotics hardware, you will ensure our researchers, engineers, and autonomous systems interact in a secure, compliant, and highly organized environment.

Core ResponsibilitiesPriority Focus: Safety Audits & Incident Documentation

• Rigorous Safety Audits: Design, schedule, and execute routine safety audits across all physical testing environments, robot cells, and hardware workspaces to ensure continuous compliance with internal benchmarks and industrial safety standards.

• Incident & Near-Miss Documentation: Own the end-to-end incident management pipeline. Act as the primary point of contact for documenting, archiving, and analyzing any lab incidents, mechanical anomalies, or near-misses.

• Root-Cause Analysis (RCA): Lead structured post-incident investigations to identify systematic risks, authoring comprehensive RCA reports and implementing Corrective and Preventive Actions (CAPA).

• Data-Driven Risk Mitigation: Treat safety data as a core operational asset—tracking safety metrics and audit trends to proactively surface and mitigate physical, electrical, and battery-related hazards.

• Cross-functional standardization & accountability: Build the tools/processes and associated documentation to drive standardization regarding safe work practices across all multiple facilities. Build mechanisms to hold all employees and partners to a high bar for safety in any Robotics facility.

Lab Leadership & Operational Excellence

• Daily Lab Operations: Manage the layout, organization, and upkeep of our physical testing arenas and motion-capture volumes using 5S or equivalent workplace organization methodologies.

• Hardware & Asset Management: Oversee the inventory, calibration, and maintenance of specialized robotics hardware, compute nodes, and safety gear (PPE).

• Cross-Functional Coordination: Collaborate closely with hardware and software engineering teams to smoothly manage workspace allocation for concurrent foundation model testing tracks.

Safety Culture & Onboarding

• Onboarding & Compliance: Develop, update, and deliver mandatory safety onboarding modules for all incoming engineers, researchers, and partners.

• Culture Champion: Cultivate a proactive, "safety-first" culture that matches the velocity of Scale's rapid AI development without compromising on physical guardrails.

Qualifications & ExperienceRequirements

• Experience: 3+ years of experience in lab management, safety coordination, or technical operations within a high-velocity robotics, aerospace, automotive, or autonomous vehicle R&D environment.

• Safety Protocols: Demonstrated experience building out structured audit workflows and detailed incident documentation pipelines (familiarity with OSHA standards or ISO robotics safety standards is highly valued).

• Technical Comfort: Ability to seamlessly navigate an environment featuring complex physical hardware, multi-modal sensors, and advanced compute rigs.

• Communication & Drive: Exceptional written communication skills for documentation, with the assertive communication style required to enforce safety protocols across a brilliant, fast-moving engineering team.

*Compensation packages at Scale for eligible roles include base salary, equity, and benefits. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position and may be inclusive of several career levels at Scale; it will be determined during the interview process based on work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, qualifications, interview performance, and relevant education or training. Scale employees in eligible roles are also granted equity based compensation, subject to Board of Director approval. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during the hiring process, and confirm whether the hired role will be eligible for equity grant. You'll also receive benefits including, but not limited to: comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, a learning and development stipend, and generous PTO. Additionally, this role may be eligible for additional benefits such as a commuter stipend.*

The base salary range for this full-time position in the location of San Francisco is:

$134,400—$168,000 USD

***PLEASE NOTE:Our policy requires a 90-day waiting period before reconsidering candidates for the same role. This allows us to ensure a fair and thorough evaluation of all applicants.*

About Us:

*At Scale, our mission is to develop reliable AI systems for the world's most important decisions. Our products provide the high-quality data and full-stack technologies that power the world's leading models, and help enterprises and governments build, deploy, and oversee AI applications that deliver real impact. We work closely with industry leaders like Meta, Ernst& Young, Mayo Clinic, Time Inc., the Government of Qatar, and U.S. government agencies including the Army and Air Force. We are expanding our team to accelerate the development of AI applications.

*We believe that everyone should be able to bring their whole selves to work, which is why we are proud to be an inclusive and equal opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability status, gender identity or Veteran status.

*We are committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with physical and mental disabilities. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation in the application*