Safety Validation Lead, Scenarios

Atoms; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Atoms is seeking a technical individual contributor to own safety-relevant scenarios for our real-world robotics platforms. You will define what makes a scenario safety-relevant, build the catalog, and own the argument that it is sufficient.

The catalog combines log-based events from real operations with NCAP-based crash-avoidance protocols, and you will determine how they fit together into one coverage argument.

Qualifications

• Own the criteria that make a scenario safety-relevant and the criticality measures that decide it.
• Build the pipeline that mines fleet data for safety-relevant events and converts them into parameterized, reusable scenarios.
• Own the implementation and upkeep of standardized safety protocol suites derived from NCAP and related published protocols.

Responsibilities

• Define how scenarios run (resimulation, SIL/HIL, vehicle-in-the-loop, on-road) and what evidence each method yields.
• Create a regression suite to keep known failures from returning.
• Interface with safety operations to translate triggering conditions and hazards into scenario-based evidence.

Job description

Who we are

Atoms is building the machines that power the next era of progress.

Over the last decade, software has transformed the digital world. But the physical world, where food is made, minerals are mined, goods are moved, and industries are run, remains far less intelligent, far less efficient, and far more constrained. We're changing that.

Atoms builds Physical AI- real-world robots for the industries that move civilization forward, starting with food, mining, and transport. Our systems are designed to understand, predict, and control the real world with precision, turning complex physical operations into something more reliable, more scalable, and more productive.

This work requires more than robotics. It requires deep integration across hardware, software, AI, operations, manufacturing, and real estate. We don't just build machines in a lab. We deploy them into real environments, operate them, learn from them, and improve them until they work at scale.

We are roboticists, engineers, operators, and builders. We believe the next great technology companies will not only transform information, but the physical systems that shape everyday life.

About the role

This role owns the safety-relevant scenarios we validate against. You will define what makes a scenario safety-relevant, build the catalog, and own the argument that it is sufficient.

The catalog draws from two sources that behave very differently. Log-based scenarios come from real events, real interactions, and real distributions, and they bring the problem of finding the few that matter inside a very large volume of ordinary driving. NCAP-based scenarios come from the crash-avoidance portions of published consumer test protocols: precisely specified, externally credible, and designed for a driver-assist framing that has to be adapted before it means anything for an automated platform. You will own both, and you will own the harder question of how they fit together into one coverage argument.

This is a technical individual contributor role. You will build the pipelines and write the analysis yourself, and the coverage position you take becomes part of the safety case.

What you'll do

• Scenario definition and taxonomy. Own the criteria that make a scenario safety-relevant and the criticality measures that decide it. Maintain the taxonomy and the abstraction levels - functional, logical, concrete - and keep the catalog coherent as it grows rather than letting it accrete.
• Log-based scenario extraction. Build the pipeline that mines fleet data for safety-relevant events - disengagements, interventions, near-misses, anomalous interactions - and converts them into parameterized, reusable scenarios. Own the criticality metrics used to surface candidates, such as time-to-collision, post-encroachment time, and margin to the drivable envelope, and be clear-eyed about what those metrics miss.
• Crash-avoidance protocol suites. Own the implementation and upkeep of standardized suites derived from the crash-avoidance portions of NCAP and equivalent published protocols - AEB car-to-car, AEB vulnerable road user (pedestrian, cyclist, motorcyclist), lane support, and emergency steering cases - including test conditions and pass/fail criteria.
• Execution and evidence. Define how scenarios run - resimulation, SIL and HIL, vehicle-in-the-loop, closed course, on-road - and what evidence each method can and cannot produce. Own the regression suite that keeps known failures from returning.
• Interfaces. Take triggering conditions and hazards from functional safety and field events from safety operations, and return scenario-based evidence they can rely on. Your output is a substantial part of the validation argument in the safety case.

Working AI-native

We expect this role to be materially more productive than the same role was three years ago, and we expect AI tooling to be the reason. We are adopting AI systems purpose-built to accelerate safety analysis - scenario mining and categorization, criticality assessment, parameter space search, and documentation - and this role is expected to put them to work and shape what they become. Concretely, we want someone who:

• Uses LLM-based and purpose-built tooling as a working instrument in the analysis itself - classifying and clustering large volumes of log events, proposing and stress-testing scenario variants, cross-checking a catalog for gaps, mapping published protocols onto our own taxonomy, and drafting and maintaining validation documentation.
• Builds their own tooling rather than filing tickets for it. Writes the extraction pipelines, the coverage analysis, and the reporting, and keeps them running.
• Understands where AI assistance is legitimate and where it is not. A generated scenario set is a hypothesis to verify, never coverage. Validation claims require human judgment and traceable justification, and you should be rigorous about that.