Safety System Engineer (Automotive Safety)

Location: Sunnyvale, California, USA; hybrid working model with in-person collaboration in offices and remote work. The role includes hands-on work in vehicle workshops and labs. Relocation support and visa sponsorship are available where applicable.

Company

hirify.global is building an end-to-end AI platform for autonomous driving that learns from real-world experience and integrates with global OEM partners.

What you will do

• Lead functional safety activities for the Automated Driving System and its integration with current and future vehicle platforms and third-party safety-critical systems.
• Build and maintain Item Definition work products for vehicle platforms and safety-critical integrations.
• Conduct HARAs, FMEAs and FTAs, identify risks, and define safety concepts that reduce risk to an acceptable level.
• Collaborate with design, software, hardware, systems and external partner teams on safety architectures, decomposition decisions, requirements and target-hardware implementation.
• Define integration-level test specifications, including vehicle-level verification and validation of safety concepts.
• Build structured safety cases and contribute to production safety work products, safety processes and certification activities.

Requirements

• At least 5 years of hands-on automotive functional safety experience applying ISO 26262 across different systems.
• Strong working knowledge of ISO 26262 Parts 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9.
• Experience conducting vehicle-level testing at proving grounds to verify and validate safety concepts.
• Experience with HARA, FMEA and FTA, translating findings into practical safety concepts, architectures and requirements.
• Ability to work across software, hardware, systems and external partners and debate safety-related trade-offs at different organisational levels.
• Ability to balance risk and benefit in a fast-moving development environment while maintaining high safety standards.
• Self-starter able to move between long-term, high-level safety thinking and detailed subsystem or application-level problem solving, challenge ideas constructively, and remain open to feedback.

Nice to have

• Practical experience with ISO 26262 Part 6, including production software development and software-tool qualification.
• Experience managing suppliers of safety-related hardware or software, including DIA definition, supplier audits and assessments.
• Experience developing safety cases for automated driving systems, including computer-vision-based systems, and enough neural-network knowledge to discuss safety assurance approaches with scientists and engineers.
• Experience with SOTIF, including identifying triggering conditions and defining testing and validation strategies.
• Operational safety experience, including identifying operational risks and defining training or procedures for safe public-road testing.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid work with dedicated offices and focused remote-work time; core hours and hands-on vehicle workshop and lab work.
• Equity participation and annual market-benchmarked salaries.
• Learning and development budgets for training, conferences and professional growth.
• Health and dental insurance, enhanced maternity and paternity leave, retirement or pension benefits where applicable, therapist access and wellbeing partnerships.
• Inclusive, fair and respectful culture with emphasis on ownership in a developing organisational structure.

Hiring process

• Initial 30-minute recruiter call.
• Hiring manager and competency interview focused on functional safety experience and approach.
• Deep-dive technical interviews on functional safety, system safety and domain-specific problem solving, followed by a final mission and values interview.