Senior Functional Safety Engineer

Bot Auto; Houston (TX); Hybrid; USD 170,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Bot Auto is seeking a Senior Functional Safety Engineer to define and improve safety for our autonomous trucking platform. You will lead hazard analysis, safety requirements, safety case development, and risk assessments across autonomy, vehicle, hardware, and software teams, bridging deep technical analysis with practical deployment in real-world freight operations.

You will collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure traceability from hazards to requirements, verification, and

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Systems Engineering, Electrical, Mechanical, or related technical field.
• 7+ years of experience in systems safety or safety-critical engineering for autonomous or complex cyber-physical systems.
• Experience with hazard analyses such as HARA, FMEA, FTA, STPA, and risk assessment.
• Experience developing or contributing to safety cases for safety-critical systems.
• Strong understanding of autonomous vehicle architecture and safety standards (ISO 26262, SAE J3016, ISO PAS 8800).
• Ability to translate ambiguous risks into structured engineering requirements and actionable mitigations.
• Excellent technical communication and collaboration in fast-moving startup environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead system safety analyses for Bot Auto’s autonomous trucking platform, including autonomy software, vehicle controls, perception, planning, and sensors.
• Develop and maintain hazard analyses, functional safety concepts, safety requirements, safety cases, risk assessments, and validation evidence.
• Translate hazards and operational risks into clear, testable safety requirements for engineering, validation, operations, and fleet teams.
• Partner with autonomy, software, hardware, vehicle integration, infrastructure, security, operations, and test teams to ensure safety requirements are implemented and verified.
• Implement safety management across suppliers and distributed safety teams to track safety case work products.
• Support definition and refinement of the Operational Design Domain, including routes, constraints, and risk boundaries.
• Evaluate safety impacts of new features, software releases, and hardware changes.
• Drive safety reviews for on-road testing, driverless readiness, and incident analysis.
• Infer safety trends from logs, simulations, tests, and fleet data to identify improvements.
• Define verification strategies across simulation, closed-course, structured road testing, shadow mode, and deployment.
• Ensure traceability from hazards to requirements, verification, and safety-case evidence.
• Contribute to safety governance, launch readiness, and change management processes.

Skills

Functional Safety

Hazard Analysis

Safety Case Development

FMEA

FTA

STPA

Risk Assessment

Traceability

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Systems Engineering

Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering

Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering

Tools

JAMA

Polarion

DOORS

Confluence/JIRA

Job description

At Bot Auto, we are revolutionizing the transportation of goods with our cutting-edge autonomous trucks, enhancing the quality of life for communities around the globe. With the agility of a start-up and the wisdom of seasoned experts, Bot Auto boasts a team that has achieved numerous world-firsts and unparalleled innovations. United by a shared vision, we create miracles and propel the future of transportation. Join us and transform your dreams into reality.

About the Role

Bot Auto is seeking a SeniorFunctional Safety Engineer to help define, analyze, validate, and continuously improve the safety of our autonomous trucking platform. In this role, you will work across autonomy, vehicle platform, hardware, software, operations, validation, and fleet teams to ensure our autonomous driving system is designed, tested, and operated with rigorous safety principles. This role will focus heavily on the functional safety and redundancy designs of our next generation platform working with our hardware and infrastructure software systems team.

You will own and contribute to hazard analysis, safety requirements, safety case development, operational risk assessments, verification and validation evidence, and launch readiness reviews for Level 4 autonomous trucking operations. This is a high-impact role for an engineer who can bridge deep technical analysis with practical deployment needs in real-world freight operations.

What You’ll Do

• Lead system safety analysis for Bot Auto’s autonomous trucking platform, including autonomy software, vehicle controls, perception, planning, prediction, localization, compute, sensors, communications, fallback behavior, and operational processes
• Develop and maintain safety artifacts such as hazard analyses, functional safety concepts, technical safety requirements, safety cases, risk assessments, fault trees, FMEAs, STPA analyses, ODD assessments, and validation evidence
• Translate hazards and operational risks into clear, testable safety requirements for engineering, validation, operations, and fleet teams
• Partner internally with autonomy, software, hardware, vehicle integration, infrastructure, security, operations, and test teams to ensure safety requirements are implemented and verified
• Implement the Functional Safety Manager type of role for our autonomous vehicle platform working externally with suppliers, the distributed safety development/DIA, and tracking of functional safety case work products across tiered suppliers and integrators
• Support definition and refinement of the Operational Design Domain, including operating routes, environmental constraints, traffic conditions, vehicle behavior boundaries, fallback strategies, and minimum-risk maneuvers
• Evaluate safety impacts of new autonomy features, software releases, hardware changes, sensor configurations, operational procedures, and route expansions
• Drive safety reviews for on-road testing, driverless readiness, commercial operations, incident response, and post-event analysis
• Analyze logs, simulations, test results, disengagements, safety-driver interventions, fleet events, and edge cases to identify safety trends and improvement opportunities
• Define verification and validation strategies for safety-critical requirements across simulation, closed-course testing, structured road testing, shadow mode, and operational deployment
• Work with cross-functional teams to ensure traceability from hazards to requirements, implementation, test coverage, and safety-case evidence
• Contribute to safety governance, launch readiness criteria, change management, release approval processes, and operational safety metrics
• Support regulatory, customer, partner, insurer, and internal safety reviews as needed
• Promote a strong safety culture while enabling fast, disciplined engineering execution

What We’re Looking For

• Bachelor’s degree in Systems Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Robotics, Computer Science, Aerospace Engineering, Automotive Engineering, or a related technical field
• 7+ years of experience in systems safety, functional safety, autonomous vehicles, robotics, aerospace, automotive, heavy vehicles, safety-critical software, or complex cyber-physical systems
• Strong experience performing safety analyses such as HARA, FMEA, FTA, STPA, failure mode analysis, requirements decomposition, and risk assessment
• Experience developing or contributing to safety cases for safety-critical systems
• Strong understanding of autonomous vehicle system architecture, including perception, prediction, planning, control, localization, mapping, vehicle actuation, compute, sensing, and fleet operations
• Understanding of highly redundant, fault tolerant architectures and fail operational ADS and vehicle health management
• Familiarity with safety standards and frameworks such as ISO 26262, ISO 21448/SOTIF, UL 4600 Safety Case, SAE J3016/J3018, MIL-STD-882, IEC 61508, or similar safety-critical system standards
• Demonstrated experience with distributed development of safety systems and coordination of safety work products and safety case at automotive OEM and Tier 1 or similar OEM/integration level across system of systems and key elements
• Familiarity with emerging standards and best practices for road vehicles using physical AI and driven by ADS, such as AVSC Best Practices, SAE standards, and ISO PAS 8800
• Ability to convert ambiguous technical and operational risks into structured engineering requirements and actionable mitigations, arrive as a leader in your field ready to drive our AV safety readiness
• Experience working with verification and validation teams to define evidence needed to support safety claims
• Strong technical communication skills, including the ability to present risk decisions, tradeoffs, and safety arguments to engineering leaders and cross-functional stakeholders
• Comfort working in a fast-moving startup environment where safety rigor, execution speed, and practical deployment constraints must be balanced

Nice to Have

• Experience with autonomous trucks, commercial vehicles, robotics, AV operations, fleet operations, or on-road testing
• Experience with ISO26262 or similar safety audit and assessment process
• Experience supporting driverless launch readiness, route readiness, ODD expansion, or commercial autonomous vehicle deployment
• Experience analyzing vehicle logs, simulation results, scenario databases, disengagements, incidents, or safety-driver interventions
• Familiarity with trucking operations, FMCSA/DOT regulations, commercial vehicle safety, or heavy-duty vehicle systems
• Experience with requirements management and traceability tools such as JAMA, Polarion, DOORS, Confluence/JIRA, or similar
• Experience with Python, SQL, data analysis, log analysis, or scripting for safety metrics and validation evidence
• Experience with cybersecurity risk assessment, operational safety, incident response, or emergency response planning and automotive standard ISO21434 and UN ECE R155
• Advanced degree in engineering, robotics, safety engineering, or a related discipline

Key Success Measures

• Safety requirements are clear, testable, traceable, and aligned with system hazards
• Safety analyses are current, technically rigorous, and integrated into engineering and release decisions
• Safety-case evidence supports operational readiness decisions for new features, routes, and deployment milestones
• Cross-functional teams understand key hazards, mitigations, fallback expectations, and validation requirements
• Safety risks are identified early, communicated clearly, and resolved through practical engineering and operational controls
• AV vehicle architectures and risk assessment organized per ISO26262 and relevant safety standards with strong leadership across safety critical suppliers and delivered components and safety analyses

Who You Are

You are a systems thinker who can understand the full autonomous trucking stack—from sensors and autonomy software to vehicle actuation, operations, and real-world deployment. You are rigorous but pragmatic, comfortable challenging assumptions, and able to partner with fast-moving engineering teams without becoming a bottleneck. You care deeply about safety, but you also understand that safety engineering must produce actionable decisions, not just documentation. You can explain–even teach–complex topics in autonomy safety with clarity and to build support across multiple stakeholders and partners.

As set forth in Bot Auto’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy,we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection.As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measurethe effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categoriesis as follows:

We are a federal contractor or subcontractor. The law requires us to provide equal employment opportunity to qualified people with disabilities. We have a goal of having at least 7% of our workers as people with disabilities. The law says we must measure our progress towards this goal. To do this, we must ask applicants and employees if they have a disability or have ever had one. People can become disabled, so we need to ask this question at least every five years.