Functional Safety Lead

Who we are 

Atoms is building the machines that power the next era of progress.

Over the last decade, software has transformed the digital world. But the physical world, where food is made, minerals are mined, goods are moved, and industries are run, remains far less intelligent, far less efficient, and far more constrained. We’re changing that.

Atoms builds Physical AI— real-world robots for the industries that move civilization forward, starting with food, mining, and transport. Our systems are designed to understand, predict, and control the real world with precision, turning complex physical operations into something more reliable, more scalable, and more productive.

This work requires more than robotics. It requires deep integration across hardware, software, AI, operations, manufacturing, and real estate. We don’t just build machines in a lab. We deploy them into real environments, operate them, learn from them, and improve them until they work at scale.

We are roboticists, engineers, operators, and builders. We believe the next great technology companies will not only transform information, but the physical systems that shape everyday life.

If you want to work on hard problems with real-world impact, join us.

About the role

This role owns the technical safety analysis of our automated vehicle platform and sensor suite. You will lead the fault and failure analysis of the platform and its sensing chain — what can fail, how those failures manifest, how the system behaves when they occur, and whether that behavior is satisfactory.

You will also determine the safety impact of change. Hardware revisions, sensor changes, mounting and calibration updates, software releases, new platform variants, and expansions of the operating domain all move the safety argument.

This is a technical individual contributor role with real impact. You will lead the analysis and documentation, and your assessment carries weight in development decisions.

What you’ll do

• Hazard analysis and safety requirements. Own HARA for the platform, derive safety goals and requirements, and drive them into the architecture. Maintain traceability from hazard to requirement to verification evidence.
• Fault and failure analysis. Lead FMEA across the platform — actuation interfaces, redundancy, and fallback paths — and across the sensor suite: sensor faults, degraded and partially obscured modes, and the failure modes that are silent rather than loud.
• Sensor suite safety. Own the analysis of sensing sufficiency and degradation: what coverage exists, how it erodes under adverse conditions, which combinations of sensor loss are tolerable, how faults are detected and how quickly, and what the system does about them.
• Change impact analysis. Own the process and the judgment. Define what triggers a safety assessment, what depth each class of change warrants, what evidence is needed to clear it, and what gets escalated. Make the assessment fast enough that engineering routes changes through it rather than around it.
• Safety case and standards. Build and maintain the safety argument for the platform, structured against ISO 26262, ISO 21448 (SOTIF), and UL 4600 as appropriate. Work with the safety case leads on the interpretation of where these standards apply and why.
• Verification strategy. Define what evidence closes each safety claim: fault injection, HIL and vehicle-level testing, field data, or analysis. Partner with engineering to build the fault injection and degraded-mode test capability required.
• Interface with operations. Work with safety operations so that field events, disengagements, and investigation findings flow into hazard analysis, and so that identified hazards produce operational controls where engineering controls are not yet available.

Working AI-native

We expect this role to be materially more productive than the same role was three years ago, and we expect AI tooling to be the reason. We are adopting AI systems purpose-built to accelerate safety analysis — hazard identification, failure mode generation, traceability, and documentation — and this role is expected to put them to work and shape what they become. Concretely, we want someone who:

• Uses LLM-based and purpose-built safety-analysis tooling as a working instrument in the analysis itself — generating and stress-testing failure mode candidates, cross-checking analyses for gaps, interrogating large requirement and standards corpora, drafting and maintaining safety documentation, and doing first-pass change impact triage across a large change surface.
• Builds their own tooling rather than filing tickets for it. Writes code and scripts to pull field data, automate traceability checks, keep analysis artifacts in sync with the design, and surface where the safety case has gone stale.
• Understands where AI assistance is legitimate and where it is not. A generated failure mode list is a hypothesis to verify, never evidence. Safety claims require human judgment and traceable justification, and you should be rigorous about that boundary while still capturing the leverage.
• Can reason about the safety implications of ML-based components in the system itself — how you make claims about a perception or planning stack whose behavior is learned rather than specified.

We would rather hire a strong functional safety engineer who is curious and moving fast on AI tooling than someone who has the vocabulary but not the practice. Be prepared to show us how you actually work.

What we’re looking for

• 8+ years in functional safety for automotive, automated vehicles, aerospace, industrial automation, or another safety-critical hardware domain, with deep hands-on analysis experience rather than process oversight alone.
• Demonstrated ownership of HARA, FMEA, and FTA on real systems that shipped. We will go deep on specific analyses you have authored.
• Strong standards fluency: ISO 26262, ISO 21448 (SOTIF), and UL 4600. Working knowledge of ISO/SAE 21434 for cybersecurity, ISO 34502 or equivalent scenario-based evaluation approaches, and SAE J3016. Just as important: the judgment to apply these standards proportionately rather than performing compliance theater.
• Real hardware and electrical depth: sensors, actuation interfaces, power and grounding, wiring, EMC, redundancy architecture. You are comfortable at the vehicle with a schematic and a scope.
• Programming ability — Python or similar — sufficient to analyze field data, build your own tooling, and work fluently with an AI coding assistant.

Nice to have

• Experience integrating safety-critical systems onto vehicle platforms designed by another organization.
• Experience authoring or defending a safety case to an external party.
• Certification such as Functional Safety Engineer, or equivalent demonstrated depth.
• Experience with fault injection frameworks, HIL, or automated safety verification pipelines.

Why join us

At Atoms, you’ll work on one of the defining challenges of our time—bringing automation into the physical world to drive real, lasting impact. We exist to uncover valuable unknown truths and turn them into progress, which means constantly pushing beyond what’s known and building what doesn’t yet exist. The work is ambitious and often challenging, but it’s grounded in a shared sense of purpose and a team committed to seeing it through together. Our work only matters if it serves others, and we know that meaningful progress depends on the trust of the people we serve and the strength of our team—so we invest in both, creating an environment where you can do your best work and grow.

What else you need to know

This role is based in our San Francisco office. Atoms is a company driven by invention and continuous change - we are constantly reimagining our industries, building new products, and refining how we operate. We do our best work together. That’s why all of our office-based teams work onsite, five days a week.

The base salary range for this role is $182,000 - $230,000 per year.

Actual compensation will be determined on an individual basis and may vary depending on experience, skills, and qualifications.

Base salary is just one part of your total rewards package. You may also be eligible for equity awards.

Benefits Summary (USA Full-Time Exempt Employees):

• Medical, Dental, Vision, Disability, and Life Insurance
• Flexible Spending Account / Health Savings Account Options
• 401(k)
• Equity
• Sick Time, Unlimited Flexible Time Off, and Paid Holidays
• Paid Parental Leave 
• Pre-Tax Commuter Benefit Plan
• Team lunch in our SoMa office every Tuesday and Thursday

Benefits are subject to change at the company's discretion.
Atoms accepts applications on an ongoing basis.

Ready to join us as we serve those who serve others? 

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