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Lead Functional Safety Engineer

Dexterity· Engineering – Hardware
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Redwood City, CA$130k - $192kFTPosted 3d ago

About the role

Lead functional safety engineering for industrial robots, autonomous mobile systems, and motion-control and drivetrain architectures. Own the full safety lifecycle from hazard and risk analysis through requirements, architecture, implementation, verification, and validation to support compliant deployment in North American, European, and Japanese markets.

Responsibilities

  • - Create and maintain a Functional Safety Management Plan. Lifecycle, responsibilities, required work products, competence and independence requirements, and approval authority.
  • - Develop and maintain Quality Management System (QMS) integration. Define how safety activities, reviews, approvals, deviations, corrective actions, and audits run within the existing quality processes.
  • - Perform machinery risk assessments per ISO 12100; identify hazards, define safe states and safety functions, and determine required Performance Level (PLr) or Safety Integrity Level (SIL).
  • - Support compliance and certification activities with certification bodies, test laboratories, and external assessors, including UL, TÜV, NRTLs, notified bodies, and other relevant organizations.
  • - Interpret relevant regulations and standards, advise engineering teams on their practical application, and maintain awareness of changing robotics-safety and compliance expectations
  • - Develop and review safety architectures for E-stop, protective stop, Safe Torque Off (STO), safe stopping, safely limited speed, overspeed protection, brake control, restart prevention, and protective sensing.
  • - Apply ISO 13849-1/-2 and IEC 62061, including redundancy, diagnostics, MTTFd/PFH calculations, common-cause failure analysis, and validation.
  • - Analyze robotic and drivetrain failure modes, including motor and inverter faults, welded switching devices, encoder or feedback loss, brake, steering, and gearbox failures, unintended torque, overspeed, and loss of control.
  • - Define safety interfaces among safety PLCs, robot controllers, servo drives and inverters, motors, brakes, encoders, scanners, contactors, and safety I/O; specify safe behavior for communication loss or invalid data.
  • - Apply safety-rated communication protocols such as PROFIsafe, CIP Safety, and EtherCAT/FSoE, with working knowledge of PROFINET, EtherNet/IP, and other industrial networks as system interfaces.
  • - Perform HARA, FMEA/FMECA/FMEDA/DFMEA, fault tree analysis (FTA), fault injection testing, and safety-case analyses; translate results into traceable safety requirements and design evidence.
  • - Perform mechanical and structural analysis. Failure analysis for components whose failure can create or worsen a hazard, linked to inspection and proof-test needs.
  • - Plan and execute verification and validation activities covering stopping performance, response time, sensor and encoder faults, drive faults, communication loss, restart behavior, and achievement of the defined safe state.
  • - Support safety-related PLC and embedded implementation, component selection, IEC 61131-3 programming, customer-site standard operating procedures, and scalable safety training and troubleshooting.
  • - Engage in customer-facing technical meetings to clarify safety design decisions, explain FuSa compliance, and provide expert guidance on system guardrails

Qualifications

  • - Bachelor's degree in Electrical, Mechanical, or a related engineering discipline.
  • - 10+ years of functional safety experience in robotics, autonomous systems, industrial automation, automotive, aerospace, or other safety-critical machinery domains.
  • - Hands-on experience with servo drives, inverters, motor controls, encoders, brakes, safety PLCs, safety I/O, and safety-rated networks.
  • - Demonstrated ownership of the complete safety lifecycle: hazard and risk analysis → safety requirements → PLr/SIL determination → architecture → implementation → verification → validation.
  • - Ability to evaluate manipulator and mobile-platform/drivetrain hazards, including stopping distance, stored energy, braking, unintended motion, and loss of control.
  • - Experience with Structured Text, Ladder Logic, and/or Function Block Diagram, along with PLCs, microcontrollers, and safety-related embedded systems.
  • - Functional safety certification such as TÜV Functional Safety Engineer, CFSE, CFSP, or CMSE preferred.
  • - Candidates must be able to determine how a safety-critical failure is detected, how the system reaches a defined safe state, and how the required PL/SIL is quantitatively justified and demonstrated through analysis, implementation, and validation.

Skills

Required:Functional Safety LifecycleSafety Standards and RegulationsSafety PLCs & Networks

Benefits

  • equity
  • medical, dental, and vision benefits
Last updated Oct 22, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
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The foundational platform for enterprise Physical AI.

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