Senior Probabilistic Risk Engineer for Autonomous Systems

Omaze; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 245,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation package

Medical, dental, vision plans

401(k)

Flexible PTO

Dog-friendly office

Job summary

Kodiak Robotics, Inc. is seeking a Senior Autonomy Safety Engineer in the SF Bay Area to advance safety claims for autonomous systems in freight and defense logistics. You will build risk models, run simulations, and influence safety-focused design decisions.

The role requires advanced degrees, strong probability and statistics skills, and experience with Python and modern C++. Collaboration with a high-impact team will shape safety standards and verification practices across the company.

Qualifications

• Advanced degree in engineering, mathematics, statistics, or related field.
• Deep applied probability and statistics, including tail distributions.
• Experience modeling complex system risk and uncertainty propagation.
• Ability to estimate rare events with advanced sampling or variance-reduction techniques.
• Proficiency with Bayesian methods for sparse evidence.

Responsibilities

• Find failure modes and edge cases; write C++ to explore failure spaces.
• Build probabilistic risk models to estimate autonomy-level risk.
• Provide rigorous risk-informed design decisions for safety and performance.
• Run simulations and analyze results; communicate findings to leadership.
• Develop and apply new safety methods when existing approaches fall short.

Skills

Probability & statistics

Bayesian methods

Risk modeling

Statistical modeling

Numerical computing

Communication

Generative AI tooling

Problem solving

Autonomy safety

Education

M.S. or Ph.D. in engineering, mathematics, statistics, or a related field

Tools

Python (numpy/scipy/pandas)

Modern C++ (C++17/20)

Job description

Kodiak Robotics, Inc. is seeking a Senior Autonomy Safety Engineer in the SF Bay Area to advance safety claims for autonomous systems in freight and defense logistics. You will build risk models, run simulations, and influence safety-focused design decisions.

The role requires advanced degrees, strong probability and statistics skills, and experience with Python and modern C++. Collaboration with a high-impact team will shape safety standards and verification practices across the company.