Job description template · Functional safety
Senior Functional Safety Engineer (Hardware)
StageUnknownStandardsISO 26262 · IEC 61508 · ISO 13849 · IEC 62061 · ISO 25119 · ISO 19014IndustryRoboticsSenioritySeniorRegionCanadaWork modeUnknownSource year2026Company sizeUnknownBenefitsadapt to your organisation
This role is currently open. See the posting.
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Role summary
We’re growing our sizable fleet of retrofitted autonomous construction machines, and we’re looking for a talented functional safety engineer to help define the functional and technical safety concept across the system, with a focus on hardware. You will work alongside the safety, hardware and software teams to conduct safety analysis, develop diagnostics, generate fault metrics, and guide key system elements through the end-to-end safety lifecycle.
Responsibilities
- Help define the functional safety concept for the system
- Author technical safety concepts at the HW level
- Partner with HW team to understand architectural requirements for future HW platforms
- Author HW safety requirements and drive design of safety mechanisms
- Establish test plans for verification and validation of the safety requirements
- Define test infrastructure and automation to support timely program execution
- Execute safety analysis such as HARAHazard Analysis and Risk Assessment: the concept-phase activity and resulting document that identifies hazards and derives safety goals and integrity targets. Read more, FMEAFailure Modes and Effects Analysis: a bottom-up method cataloging how components fail and what effects those failures produce. Read more, FMEDAFailure Modes, Effects and Diagnostic Analysis: quantitative failure analysis producing safe/dangerous failure rates and diagnostic coverage. Read more, and FTA
Background
- BS or advanced degree in electrical, mechanical, systems, or a related engineering field, or equivalent practical experience.
- 7+ years in safety-critical hardware or systems engineering, including several focused specifically on functional safety.
- Hands-on hardware background: you have designed, reviewed, brought up, debugged, or qualified electrical and electronic hardware yourself, not only assessed it from documents.
- Working knowledge of functional safety standards ISO 13849, IEC 61508Functional Safety of E/E/PE Safety-Related Systems. The umbrella functional safety standard defining the safety lifecycle, SILA discrete level (SIL 1 to SIL 4) specifying the required risk reduction and dependability of a safety function under IEC 61508 and its sector standards. Read more levels, and requirements for electrical, electronic, and programmable systems. Read more, IEC 62061Safety of Machinery - Functional Safety of Control Systems. Machinery-sector implementation of IEC 61508 for safety-related electrical control systems. Read more, ISO 26262Road Vehicles - Functional Safety. Automotive functional safety standard defining ASILAutomotive Safety Integrity Level (A to D) under ISO 26262, derived from severity, exposure, and controllability. Read more levels and the automotive safety lifecycle. Read more, ISO 25119, or ISO 19014Earth-Moving Machinery - Functional Safety. Functional safety framework for earth-moving machinery control systems, defining MPL levels. Read more and how they apply to different systems and applications.
- Strong experience with safety analysis
- Comfort with real-time and embedded systems, fail-safe and fail-operational architectures, and the failure modes of sensing and compute hardware.
- Comfort working directly with hardware and test infrastructure to execute and debug safety features and tests
Ways to stand out
- Experience with autonomous systems
- Experience with system-level functional safety
- Hands-on certification or third-party assessment work (TÜV, UL, etc.)
- Experience standing up fault injection / HIL benches
- Background in sensing and compute: cameras, lidar, GNSS, IMUs
- Familiarity with heavy construction machines such as excavators, articulated dump trucks, dozers, wheel loaders, or motor graders.
How we work
We are a startup, so we look for engineers with an appetite for agility. We do not compromise on safety and we still find ways to move extremely fast. In practice that means we would rather have a sharp, quantified argument about one real hazard than an exhaustive document nobody reads.
Requirements
- Direct experience in delivering functional safety work products according to ISO 13849, ISO 26262, IEC 61508 or similar
- Strong foundational knowledge in safety engineering techniques such as HARA, FMEA, FMEDA, FTA, and STPA
- Experience defining and executing verification & validation in a safety context, including fault injection and HIL testing
- Familiarity with design and implementation of safety mechanisms and fault handling measures, such as TMR, watchdogs, redundancy management, and graceful degradation