Senior AV Safety Testing & Gate Ownership Lead

Avride; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Avride is seeking a senior role to own how safety is tested, judged and reported across the QA team. You will set the safety gates, acceptance criteria, and the safety report format, and coach the QA team to apply consistent safety judgments.

The successful candidate will be fluent in English, experienced with hazard analysis, and comfortable discussing residual risk and testing across autonomous-vehicle safety domains.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in testing, verification or validation and ownership of a gate, review or reporting standard.
• Experience where being wrong had physical consequences (autonomous vehicles, aviation, medical devices, rail, etc.).
• Hazard-driven thinking: start from what can go wrong and test what would be needed.
• Comfort with residual risk and ability to state what is unknown.
• Influence without authority: persuade engineers and QA colleagues by reasoned argument.
• Excellent written English and ability to craft clear documents.
• Fluent use of LLMs to read standards, logs and results and draft documents.
• Experience defining on-road testing safety protocols and safety-driver procedures (nice to have).

Responsibilities

• Own the safety gates: define what counts as safety findings, classification, escalation and closure.
• Own the acceptance criteria: decide what to measure at each gate and adjust thresholds as tech evolves.
• Own the safety report: format for comparability, explicit coverage, concise for decision-making.
• Coach the QA team: calibration sessions, review reports, teach the reasoning behind criteria.
• Be the safety voice in the release decision: articulate testing results and remaining unknowns for informed decisions.
• Connect hazards to evidence: relate hazard analysis outputs to scenario set requirements and safety case.
• Work with the safety organization to translate framework into testable requirements and tooling.
• Keep up with rules: track standards and regulations for driverless operations in TX and beyond.

Skills

Hazard-driven thinking

Influence without authority

Data-driven mindset

Fluent English

A habit of checking the numbers

Safety judgment

LLMs as working tool

Quality assurance leadership

Tools

SQL

Python

Job description

Avride is seeking a senior role to own how safety is tested, judged and reported across the QA team. You will set the safety gates, acceptance criteria, and the safety report format, and coach the QA team to apply consistent safety judgments.

The successful candidate will be fluent in English, experienced with hazard analysis, and comfortable discussing residual risk and testing across autonomous-vehicle safety domains.