Product Safety Engineer
About The Position
Waymo is an autonomous driving technology company focused on building the Waymo Driver and improving access to mobility while reducing traffic deaths. The Safety team develops safety goals and strategies, conducts safety engineering analyses, supports regulatory and public-sector engagement, and advises on compliance with applicable environmental, health, and safety regulations. In this hybrid role, the Product Safety Engineer manages autonomous vehicle product safety risks outside collision risk, from discovery and evaluation through escalation, mitigation, and acceptance. The role partners with systems, hardware, software, and operations experts to establish robust risk assessments that can be executed sustainably and adapt to expanding product scope. It develops risk evaluation frameworks and acceptance criteria, reviews mitigations, writes requirements and test coverage, and identifies field-monitoring KPIs. The engineer also communicates complex probabilistic models and statistical analyses as actionable safety arguments and executive summaries, and promotes a strong safety culture and continuous improvement across engineering and operations.
Requirements
- An advanced degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Engineering, or another relevant technical field, or four years of practical experience involving safety risk assessments and systems engineering.
- Proven experience managing product risk for physical products or services using quantitative or semi-quantitative risk models.
- Strong understanding of the end-to-end risk management lifecycle: identification, assessment, mitigation, and acceptance, such as under ISO 31000/31010 or equivalent standards.
- Solid understanding of safety-critical system design and the systems engineering Verification and Validation process.
- Demonstrated technical project management skills, including managing multiple parallel, cross-functional, safety-critical projects and teams.
- Ability to thrive in ambiguity.
Nice To Haves
- Deep product safety background spanning physical product design, human-machine interfaces, and services.
- Experience performing system safety risk management in autonomous vehicles, aerospace, defense, robotics, rail, or medical device industries.
- Experience using user studies, data science, and testing to drive quantitative risk reduction, provide safety insights to leadership, and assess performance.
- Experience championing safety culture, influencing engineering culture, and ensuring safety is considered in design discussions; experience mentoring or training engineering teams on safety-by-design and safety principles is particularly relevant.
- Proven leadership working with external partners, contractors, suppliers, and regulatory bodies or auditors.
Responsibilities
- Manage autonomous vehicle product safety risks other than collision risk, including risk discovery, evaluation, escalation, mitigation, and acceptance.
- Partner with systems, hardware, software, and operations experts to create robust risk assessments that are sustainable to execute and flexible as product scope expands.
- Review proposed mitigations, write requirements and test coverage, and identify KPIs for field monitoring to ensure risks are sufficiently managed and protected against regression.
- Propose an evaluation framework and acceptance criteria, drawing on industry practices and standards where applicable.
- Develop best practices for risk assessment methodologies and publish internal guidance on risk models, data sources, and computation methods.
- Translate complex probabilistic risk models and statistical analyses into clear safety arguments and executive summaries for technical leaders, cross-functional partners, and safety review boards.
- Champion a robust safety culture and continuous improvement of the Waymo safety program across engineering and operations.
Benefits
- Eligibility to participate in Waymo’s discretionary annual bonus program, subject to eligibility requirements.
- Equity incentive plan, subject to eligibility requirements.
- Generous Company benefits program, subject to eligibility requirements.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Mid Level
Education Level
No Education Listed
