Safety Lead

The role

You will own the safety architecture, risk management strategy, and system safety engineering life cycle for an autonomous vehicle platform. You will build and lead a multidisciplinary engineering team while managing technical integration and safety governance across clients, OEMs, and suppliers.

What you will do

• Recruit, mentor, and manage a multidisciplinary systems and safety engineering team.
• Author, evolve, and defend the end-to-end safety case framework.
• Define and implement safety and verification methodologies for AI and ML-based autonomy models.
• Define system-level safety requirements, hazard mitigations, and functional safety concepts.
• Oversee formal risk identification methodologies including HARA, FMEA, FTA, and STPA.
• Direct daily safety program operations and chair safety review boards.
• Partner with hardware, software, and V&V teams to validate safety arguments.
• Lead technical engagement with regulatory agencies, standard committees, and third-party auditors.
• Serve as the primary technical authority interfacing with OEM partners and Tier 1 suppliers.
• Serve as the primary safety interface with enterprise customers and commercial partners.

Required qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Systems Engineering, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.
• 10+ years of experience in systems safety engineering for safety-critical domains (autonomous vehicles, automotive, or aerospace).
• 4+ years of direct engineering management experience leading teams, managing budget/resources, and directing day-to-day engineering operations.
• Proven experience acting as a primary interface to customers or external stakeholders.
• Proven ability to operate, adapt, and drive technical outcomes in a fast-paced frontier technology environment.
• Demonstrated track record building, delivering, and defending an end-to-end safety case for deployed autonomous or robotic systems.
• Deep mastery of functional safety standards: ISO 26262, ISO 21448 (SOTIF), and UL 4600.
• Practical experience applying AI/ML safety frameworks (specifically ISO/PAS 8800) to probabilistic systems.
• Hands-on experience leading hazard analysis techniques (HARA, FMEA, FTA, STPA).
• Proven experience establishing technical safety interfaces with automotive OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers, including hands-on experience structuring DIAs.

Nice to have

• Ph.D. in Systems Engineering, Computer Science, Robotics, or Machine Learning.
• Experience managing joint-development automotive programs across multi-party supply chains (OEM, Tier 1, Tier 2) and strategic client fleets.
• Expertise assessing deep neural network (DNN) interpretability, dataset quality, and non-deterministic software verification in safety-critical deployments.
• Direct experience representing safety architectures to state/federal regulatory bodies or external certification entities.
• Proficiency with Goal Structuring Notation (GSN) and enterprise systems management tooling (e.g., Jama, Polarion, DOORS).

About the company

Gatik is a leader in autonomous middle-mile logistics, providing autonomous transportation-as-a-service (ATaaS) solutions. The company focuses on short-haul, B2B logistics for Fortune 500 retailers using proprietary Level 4 autonomous technology.