Senior Functional Safety Engineer

Bot Auto · Houston, TX or Remote

  • Senior
  • Full-time
  • Posted 2026-09-03
  • Confirmed live on 25 September 2026

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Job description

Company Introduction

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 Senior Functional 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

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