Functional Safety & RAS Lead

SiFive•Santa Clara, CA

1d•$279,504 - $341,616

About The Position

SiFive is seeking a Functional Safety & RAS Lead to help build safe and highly reliable compute platforms for automotive, robotics, physical AI, data center, and other demanding applications. This is an individual-contributor role focused on functional safety and reliability, with direct customer engagement and cross-functional technical program leadership. The role spans the product lifecycle, partnering with customers, technical architects, and engineering teams to translate safety and reliability requirements into deliverable products. The lead will guide work from initial requirements and safety goals through development, assessment, release, and customer support; coordinate engineering teams; maintain traceability of safety requirements and decisions; address technical risks; and support assessments, audits, certification, documentation, and product integration.

Requirements

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in EE, CE, CS, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent experience.
10 or more years of experience in functional safety, RAS, hardware reliability, or related work in semiconductor, processor, SoC, or other complex hardware development.
5 or more years of experience in semiconductor, SoC, processor-IP, or complex hardware development, including significant architecture or technical-leadership responsibility.
Deep experience applying ISO 26262 and functional safety methods such as FMEDA, FMEA, fault-tree analysis, diagnostic coverage, and fault injection.
Strong understanding of SoC and IP development, from requirements and architecture through verification, release, and customer support.
Experience with features intended to detect and address hardware random failures, such as error detection and reporting, fault containment, redundancy, lockstep, ECC/parity, memory protection, or recovery.
Experience leading complex, cross-functional technical programs across engineering teams.
Strong communication and judgment, with the ability to work across technical teams, customers, and other stakeholders.
A record of delivering cross-functional work across teams the candidate does not manage.
Experience applying functional safety standards to semiconductor, processor, or SoC development and working directly with automotive customers.
Sufficient knowledge of processor or SoC architecture and development to work effectively with architecture, design, and verification teams.
Experience with RAS concepts and mechanisms, including fault detection, error reporting, containment, and recovery.
Deep knowledge of functional safety and ISO 26262, including FMEDA, fault modeling, diagnostic coverage, safety cases, and fault-injection planning.
Ability to be active in the standards community and influence others while building credibility.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with IEC 61508 or other relevant functional safety standards.
Experience with RISC-V processor or SoC architecture and automotive semiconductor IP developed to ASIL-B or ASIL-D objectives.
Experience with RAS for data center, AI, robotics, or other high-availability compute products.
Experience with reliability analysis or testing, including soft-error-rate modeling or radiation testing.
Experience working with certification bodies or external assessors.
Familiarity with related standards such as ISO/SAE 21434 or cybersecurity engineering.

Responsibilities

Work with customers and internal teams to understand functional safety and RAS needs from initial requirements and safety goals through development, assessment, release, and customer support.
Partner with the technical architect to define capabilities that meet customer requirements.
Serve as a functional safety expert, especially regarding ISO 26262 and IEC 61508 and their application to processor and SoC products.
Define program scope, milestones, dependencies, risks, and engineering resource needs based on customer and product requirements.
Coordinate work across architecture, design, verification, software, quality, program management, product, and customer-facing teams.
Maintain traceability of safety requirements and decisions through implementation, verification, documentation, product changes, and releases.
Identify gaps and technical risks, including dependent failures and common-cause concerns, and work with architecture and engineering teams to address them.
Support customer assessments, internal reviews, external assessors, audits, and certification activities.
Partner with product, sales, and applications teams on customer questions, safety documentation, and product integration guidance.
Lead complex cross-functional technical programs across engineering teams.