Senior Systems Engineer, Fail Operational Safety Strategy (Robotics)

TL;DR

Senior Systems Engineer, Fail Operational Safety Strategy (Robotics): Defining and owning fail-operational safety strategies and roadmaps for autonomous robotaxis expanding into new operating environments with an accent on fault response strategies and system resilience. Focus on designing decision-making logic for malfunctions and building frameworks to assess fault handling effectiveness.

Location: Hybrid in Foster City, CA

Company

Zoox is developing a full-stack autonomous mobility solution for cities to safely deploy a robotaxi service.

What you will do

• Define and own the fail operational safety strategy and roadmap for new operating environments and Operational Design Domains (ODDs).
• Design fault response strategies and decision-making logic to maintain vehicle safety during malfunctions.
• Build frameworks and define key metrics for assessing fault handling and recovery effectiveness.
• Collaborate with software, hardware, and operations teams to ensure a holistic approach to system safety and fault tolerance.
• Leverage AI and LLM tools to accelerate analysis work and automate repetitive manual processes.

Requirements

• B.S. or higher degree in Systems Engineering, Robotics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
• 8+ years of relevant experience in systems engineering.
• Strong background in requirements management and system architecture development.
• Deep understanding of fault detection, isolation, and recovery techniques, including redundancy and failover.
• Strong analytical skills in quantitative analysis, modeling, and system-level trade-off analysis.
• Must be based in or able to work in Foster City, CA.

Nice to have

• Advanced degree (M.S. or Ph.D.) in a relevant field.
• Experience with autonomous vehicle development or complex robotics systems.
• Familiarity with requirements management tools like Polarion or DOORS.
• Experience with data analysis tools such as Databricks, BigQuery, Looker, or Grafana.
• Knowledge of industry safety standards including ISO 26262 and ISO 21448.

Culture & Benefits

• Transparent, respectful culture with strong leadership.
• Opportunity to work on pioneering safety strategies for novel autonomous environments.
• Commitment to building a diverse team with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences.
• Role focused on creating a full-stack autonomous mobility solution.