Principal Automated Driving Safety Engineer

Motional is developing an autonomous robo-taxi service and intends to align its fleet of autonomous vehicles to ISO 26262:2018, ISO 21448, and other emerging ADS safety standards to enable safe driverless operation on public roads. The Automated Driving Safety Engineer will work across multiple sites as a strong contributor in the application of the global safety standards and requirements governing the processes, activities and work products required for Motional’s autonomous operations.

This role will be responsible for ensuring that a cross-functional team at Motional including system engineers, system architects, hardware and software engineers and validation and verification engineers understand and follow the processes and generate the work products as required to build an ADS Safety Case.  Lead system analysis efforts (e.g. HARA, FMEA, FTA, DFA, STPA) and generation of structured safety requirements, including ASIL targets, decomposition strategies, and Sensing/AV AI/ML safety mitigations. Manage the generation and compilation of system-level safety documentation and confirmation measures.  Manage the component and subsystem certification processes as dictated by the ISO 26262:2018 standard.  Work with a 3rd party assessor throughout the robotaxi development process to align generation of work products towards a successful assessment.

The role requires a broad system safety view that incorporates diverse aspects (hardware, software, human, environment) of complex systems to achieve safety.

What You'll Be Doing

• Project and technical leadership to ensure Motional is following industry safety standards and its own internal safety processes
• Drive the concept level and system level requirements development and evaluate and constructively suggest implementation and validation solutions
• Collaborate with system engineers, system architects and software engineers to drive implementation of system safety for Motional’s autonomous driving system according to the applicable standards and processes
• Provide technical leadership for developing and driving Safety Concepts and realization across the ADS system at Motional
• Lead the development of a Safety process, Safety culture, and mature Safety methodology to ensure successful autonomous innovation
• Interface with quality management (QMS), cybersecurity, and operational safety (SMS)
• Engage with external manufacturers and suppliers to ensure compliance across all parts of the vehicle system
• Describe concepts and interact with safety assessors to facilitate the assessment activities

What We're Looking For

• Bachelor’s Degree or higher in Computer Science, Systems Engineering, Safety Engineering, or related engineering field
• 7+ years directly responsible for applying ISO 26262 standard or other system safety standards in an automotive or similar application
• Demonstrated experience in certifying or developing automotive software (autonomous or conventional)
• Experience with the concepts behind ISO 21448 / SOTIF
• Demonstrated practical experience with methods such as HARA, HazOp, FHA, DFMEA, SFMEA, FMEDA, FTA, STPA, reliability estimation, and root cause analysis
• Experience delivering a system safety project and/or safety critical software from concept to full validation
• Defining and documenting safety lifecycle processes for complex safety critical systems, including safety plans, safety requirements, specifications, assessments, etc.
• Excellent communication skills
• Enthusiasm and a desire to work in a very fast-paced environment where innovation and rapid change is the norm

Bonus Points (not required)

• Experience writing safety requirements (INCOSE), test plans, validation plans
• Experience writing software safety requirements (INCOSE), software test plans, software coding guidelines (MISRA), and other software lifecycle documents
• Experience in development and/or the safety of Machine Learning/AI functions in the context of vehicle sensing, perception, and guidance
• Demonstrated background in the full lifecycle of safety certification processes which may include but is not limited to ISO 26262:2018, ISO 21448, UL 4600, ARP-4761/DO-178C, IEC 61508, IEC 62304, MIL-STD-882/AOP-52, EN 50128
• Demonstrated safety experience in vehicle subsystems (e.g. steering, braking), safety critical electronics development, or sensor development
• Experience working in safety critical industries/types of systems: automotive, aviation, space, security, manufacturing, rail, automotive, oil & gas 
• Ability to read and understand complex code in C, C++, Python
• Demonstrated experience developing and validating software in real-time environments such as QNX,