Safety Engineer (Robotics)

Location: Mountain View, United States

Salary: $225,000–$280,000 per year plus equity

Company

hirify.global develops generalist intelligent humanoid robots across hardware, robot systems, AI foundation models, infrastructure, and manufacturing.

What you will do

• Own the collision-avoidance safety case from hazard identification through validation and field monitoring.
• Lead HARA, STPA, FMEA, and fault-tree analysis for perception, planning, and actuation subsystems.
• Define safety distances, detection zones, timing, spatial, and force constraints for human–robot environments.
• Apply SOTIF methodology to perception limitations, edge cases, unknown-unsafe scenarios, and continuous scenario triage.
• Define functional and technical safety requirements for detection, tracking, intent prediction, fallback behavior, and degraded states.
• Develop and deploy HIL, SIL, and system-level verification and validation equipment; support incident and near-miss investigations.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering with a focus on optics, vision pipelines, and image processing.
• 5+ years of safety engineering experience in robotics, autonomous vehicles, or other safety-critical human-interactive systems.
• Working knowledge of functional safety standards including ISO 26262, ISO 13849, ISO 10218, ISO/TS 15066, IEC 61508, or UL 4600.
• Experience with machine vision, computer vision, laser sensors, LiDAR, time-of-flight sensors, and cameras.
• Experience with STPA, FMEA, fault-tree analysis, hands-on test benches, measurement, and root-cause analysis.
• Hands-on verification and validation of safety requirements using HIL and SIL across optics, sensors, ISP, compute, AI algorithms, behavior prediction, and trajectory control.

Nice to have

• Experience with humanoid robots, automotive systems, autonomous mobile robots, or autonomous-driving programs.
• Hands-on ownership of SOTIF processes, scenario-based risk assessment, triggering-condition analysis, and unknown-unsafe scenario reduction.
• Functional Safety Engineer certification in machinery safety, automotive, or autonomous driving.
• Experience with safety-rated sensor fusion, redundant perception architectures, and simulation-based scenario generation.
• Quantitative modeling skills using Python or MATLAB for simulation, scenario analysis, and statistical validation.

Culture & Benefits

• Work on the safety foundation for humanoid robots operating in real-world human environments.
• Collaborate across functional safety, AI-driven control, hardware, and electromechanical systems.
• Report directly to the Head of Safety and Certification.
• Clear opportunity to grow into a leadership position as the safety organization scales.
• Compensation includes equity.