Functional Safety Lead (IEC 61508, Safety leadership)

Role summary

The organization is backed by world-class investors such as Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Obvious Ventures. We are a diverse and multidisciplinary team with a culture built on passion, trust, and dedication.

Responsibilities

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.

• 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

Requirements

• ISO 12100 — Machinery risk assessment and risk reduction
• ISO 13849-1/-2 — Safety-related parts of control systems: design principles and validation
• IEC 61508 - foundational, cross-industry functional-safety standard for electrical, electronic, and programmable electronic safety-related systems
• IEC 62061 — Functional safety of machinery control systems; IEC 61508 — Functional safety of electrical/electronic/programmable electronic (E/E/PE) systems, where applicable
• IEC 60204-1 / NFPA 79 — Electrical equipment of machinery
• ISO 10218-1/-2 and ANSI/RIA R15.06 — Industrial robot and robot system safety requirements
• ANSI/RIA R15.08 and ISO 3691-4 — Industrial mobile robot and driverless industrial truck safety; ANSI/ITSDF B56.5, where applicable
• IEC 61496 — Electro-sensitive protective equipment; UL 1740 and UL 3100, where applicable
• Applicable market requirements, including the EU Machinery Regulation and EMC requirements, plus North American certification requirements
• 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.

• Strong independent ownership, cross-functional communication, and the ability to convey technical safety decisions to engineering leadership and non-technical stakeholders
• Ability to develop clear compliance documentation, safety procedures, and customer-facing technical guidance
• Willingness to travel domestically and internationally as required