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Robotics Autonomy Engineer, Safety

FieldAI· Engineering – Autonomy
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Irvine, CA$100k - $230kFull-timePosted 1mo ago

About the role

Field AI is building autonomous robotic systems with a safety-focused autonomy layer. This role owns and advances the independent safety layer that keeps robots safe around people, equipment, and terrain, and integrates with planning, perception, and learned policies across multiple platforms.

Responsibilities

  • Own and evolve the safety layer that runs independently of perception, planning, and learned policies, and extend it to new wheeled, legged, and humanoid platforms
  • Build runtime monitors and collision avoidance backstops that check every commanded motion against the environment before it reaches the robot
  • Enforce speed, zone, terrain, and proximity limits, and define the safe operating envelope for each platform and deployment
  • Design fallback and minimal risk behaviors, from graceful slow down to safe stop, and the logic that decides when to trigger them
  • Build watchdogs and health monitoring across sensors, compute, communication, and actuation, so the robot always knows when it can trust itself
  • Lead hazard analysis and safety case development for new platforms and new deployments
  • Verify the safety layer in simulation, hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing, and field trials, with coverage that grows with every deployment
  • Work with planning, control, locomotion, and integration teams so the nominal stack plans and moves within the safety envelope

Qualifications

  • Master’s degree or higher in Robotics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or a Bachelor’s degree with substantial hands-on experience on safety related autonomous systems
  • 2+ years of experience developing safety, monitoring, or fallback systems for robots or autonomous vehicles
  • Strong grounding in classical planning and control, such as collision checking and trajectory validation
  • Experience writing deterministic, real time, resource bounded C++ for systems where correctness matters more than features
  • Solid Python skills for tooling, analysis, and test automation in Linux-based environments
  • A verification mindset: you think in terms of assumptions, failure modes, coverage, and evidence
  • Familiarity with safety standards for mobile robots and autonomous systems (e.g., ISO 13482, ISO 3691-4, ISO 26262)
  • Familiarity with robotics middleware such as ROS/ROS 2, and with robot sensors such as LiDAR, depth cameras, and IMUs

Skills

Required:Independent safety layer developmentRuntime monitors and collision avoidanceSafety envelope designFallback and safe-stop logicHealth monitoring across sensors/compute/actuationHazard analysis and safety case developmentSimulation, HIL testing, field trialsCross-functional collaboration
Last updated Oct 22, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About FieldAI

Robot intelligence built for the real-world.

FieldAI is the leader in deploying general-purpose robots in unstructured environments, providing a universal brain that works across many robots, and many tasks.

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