Safety Engineer

OpenKrill; United States; On-site; USD 101,000 - 146,000; Full time

Job summary

Sunrise Robotics seeks a senior machinery safety engineer to own safety across robotic cells, from design decisions to deployment on customer floors. You will shape safety functions, perform risk assessments, and ensure CE compliance while collaborating with robotics and software teams.

The role requires sign-off on safety concepts, input to design reviews, and travel up to 25% as needed, with a remote-first arrangement near CET hours and regular work at customer sites.

Qualifications

• Five+ years of machinery safety work on industrial machines or robotic cells, including risk assessments and CE marking you prepared or signed.
• Functional safety experience: specifying and validating safety functions on safety PLCs, robot safety controllers and safety sensors such as radar, scanners and light curtains.
• Reading and discussing a software design with robotics engineers about how algorithms behave around people.
• Knowledge of EU machinery law, including the new Machinery Regulation, and ISO 12100 / ISO 13849 for risk assessment and functional safety.
• You have made safety calls where no standard gave a direct answer, and documented them for others to follow.
• Willingness to travel about 25% of the time.
• Clear written English, ensuring requirements can be built and tested without ambiguity.

Responsibilities

• Define the safety concept for the cell platform and identify changes across variants.
• Provide input to safety in design and sign-off on each solution design.
• Specify and prove safety functions in the safety PLC and robot safety controller; coordination with the robotics integration engineer.
• Prepare CE technical file and DoC for each cell, including EU Machinery Regulation compliance.
• Oversee site safety for deployments, from layout to operator access and acceptance testing.
• Create safety content for the cell manual and respond to presales safety questions.

Skills

Machinery safety

Functional safety

Risk assessments

CE marking

Safety PLC

Robot safety controller

Safety sensors

Clear written English

Travel willingness

Education

TÜV Functional Safety Engineer

CMSE

Tools

Safety PLC

Robot safety controller

Radar sensors

Light curtains

Job description

OUR MISSION:

At Sunrise Robotics, we are dedicated to augmenting humanity through intelligent robotics. Our mission is to elevate the world of manufacturing by introducing intelligent, flexible robots that enhance human capabilities and existing machinery, ushering in the next era of production at higher quality, with less waste, and lower cost.

OUR VISION:

We see a future where every element of manufacturing, from design to assembly, is optimised with intelligent automation. Our vision is to integrate flexible robotic solutions, based on generic hardware and advanced software/AI capabilities, into manufacturing, particularly in small and medium-sized enterprises, to make automation economically viable and accessible, for all sizes of manufacturers. We are not just building robots; we are creating the strategically crucial components for autonomous, intelligent agents of the future.

THE ROLE

At Sunrise Robotics, this role owns the safety of our robotic cells as a product, from the first design decision to the cell running on a customer's floor. That covers functional safety, safety in our robotics software, and the sign-off of every deployment.

Our robotic cells combine two industrial robot arms, cameras, a safety PLC, radar presence sensing and software that changes what the cell does from one product variant to the next. Every new application changes the hazards. Your job is to know exactly what changed, and to stop us repeating safety work for everything that didn't.

You are part of the design, not a check at the end. You work with our robotics and software engineers on motion planning, perception and how the cell behaves around people, and decide early which risks need a safety function and which the software can handle.

We are creating a new way of doing high-mix manufacturing, and safety standards were written for machines that do one fixed job. That leaves a grey zone where the standards give no clean answer. We need someone creative who can operate in that grey zone and bring clarity: work out a safe answer, defend it, and write it down so others can follow it. That means being creative about how we reach a safe design, never about whether a design is safe.

WHAT YOU'LL OWN

• The safety concept for our cell platform: which hazards and safety functions are assessed once, so each new application assesses only what it changes.
• Safety in design: input to our robotics software from the first design review, safety requirements in every product and application requirements document, and sign-off on each solution design.
• Functional safety: you specify each safety function in the safety PLC and robot safety controller, including how reliable it must be, and prove it works. Our robotics integration engineer writes the PLC code.
• Risk assessments, the CE technical file and the Declaration of Conformity for each cell, including our move to the new EU Machinery Regulation.
• Site safety for each deployment, from layout and guarding to operator access, and safety checks at every acceptance test.
• Our rules for testing cells safely in R&D, including Reduced Safety Mode.
• Root cause investigation of safety faults and incidents.
• Safety content for the cell manual, and customers' safety questions in presales.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

• At least five years of machinery safety work on industrial machines or robotic cells, including risk assessments and CE marking you prepared or signed.
• Functional safety experience: specifying and validating safety functions on safety PLCs, robot safety controllers and safety sensors such as radar, scanners and light curtains.
• Working knowledge of EU machinery law, including the new Machinery Regulation, and of the two core standards: ISO 12100 for risk assessment and ISO 13849 for functional safety.
• You can read a software design and talk with robotics engineers about how their algorithms behave around people.
• You have made safety calls where no standard gave a direct answer, and written them up so others could follow and challenge the reasoning.
• The judgement to hold a line on safety under schedule pressure, and to bring senior engineers with you.
• Clear written English. Your requirements can be built and tested without anyone coming back to ask what you meant.
• Willingness to travel about 25% of the time.

WHAT MAKES YOU STAND OUT

• A recognised machinery safety qualification, such as TÜV Functional Safety Engineer or CMSE.
• You have built one safety concept that covered a family of machine variants.
• Experience with collaborative or fenceless robot applications.
• Experience bringing safety into robot motion, control or perception software, and a view on where machine learning ends and safety functions begin.
• Time at a machine builder or integrator that went from a handful of machines a year to dozens.

HOW YOU'LL WORK

You’ll work with product, robotics, software and mechanical engineers, our forward deployed engineers, and commercial in presales.

The role is remote, within three hours of Central European Time, with regular time at our cells in Ljubljana and on customer sites.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

In the first months, you take over safety sign-off for every cell in progress and know what is open on each.

After that, your recommendations shape every application and software design before it is built, and no deployment waits on a late safety review.

Longer term, a new application on our cell platform needs a safety assessment of its changes only.

WHY SUNRISE

• You set how safety works here. You are our primary safety engineer, so the approach, the policies and the platform safety concept are yours to define.
• A new kind of machine under new rules. Our cells change what they do from one product to the next, and EU machinery law gets its first major rewrite since 2006 in January 2027. You work out what safe looks like for this kind of machine as the rules change.
• Your work runs in production. Our cells run in electronics factories across Europe, and every safety decision you make ships with the next deployment.