Sensing and Perception System Safety Engineer (Autonomous Vehicles)

Location: Foster City, California, United States; hybrid workplace

Company

Zoox is developing a full-stack autonomous mobility solution and robotaxi platform for urban transportation.

What you will do

• Define safety requirements and metrics for camera, lidar, radar, sensor-fusion, and perception ML subsystems.
• Lead cross-functional technical projects with Software, Hardware, Operations, Data Science, and V&V teams.
• Design safe and fail-operational mechanisms using ISO 26262 and ISO 21448 SOTIF methods.
• Help develop cost-optimized sensing architectures and guide the selection of next-generation sensors.
• Analyze field and simulation data to identify root causes, validate assumptions, and define corrective actions.
• Use AI and LLM tools to accelerate analysis and automate repetitive processes.

Requirements

• BS or MS in Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, Robotics, Mechatronics, or a related technical field.
• 3+ years of hands-on systems, safety, or related engineering experience in safety-critical, high-integrity systems.
• Experience designing or analyzing complex, mission-critical systems with fail-operational redundancy, preferably in sensing and perception.
• Industry experience in Automotive, ADAS, autonomous vehicles, aerospace, or robotics.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills for explaining complex technical concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Nice to have

• Experience with sensing hardware, sensor physics, limitations, and safety-critical trade-offs.
• Experience applying ISO 26262 and ISO 21448 SOTIF to L2+ ADAS or autonomous vehicles, including hazard analysis, functional decomposition, validation, and verification.
• Experience with Python or Databricks for data mining, analysis, and visualization.
• Experience with perception stacks, ML/AI systems, performance metrics, and system-level trade-off analysis.
• Experience with Polarion, DOORS, or Jama requirements management tools.

Culture & Benefits

• Full-time employment in a hybrid work environment.
• Cross-functional collaboration across engineering, operations, data science, and verification and validation teams.
• Work on safety and reliability for next-generation autonomous mobility systems.