Safety Operations Lead

Atoms•San Francisco, CA

6d•$182,000 - $230,000•Onsite

About The Position

Atoms is hiring a Safety Operations Lead to build and run its operational safety system as its physical AI vehicle fleet grows. The role owns incident management, field-event triage, training and qualification, safety data and reporting, and the process for turning operational evidence into engineering changes. The work is hands-on: the lead will create processes, conduct initial investigations, and later hire to expand the functions that need additional scale. The role partners with the Head of Safety and is based onsite at Atoms’ San Francisco office five days a week. On-call availability is expected because incidents may occur outside business hours.

Requirements

6–8+ years of experience in safety operations, fleet safety, transportation safety, or operational risk in a safety-critical domain such as commercial trucking, autonomous vehicles, rail, aviation, or industrial operations.
Demonstrated experience leading incident investigations to root cause and driving corrective actions to closure.
Fluency with structured investigation and risk methods, including root-cause analysis, causal factor charting, human factors analysis, and hazard identification, and judgment to select an appropriate method for each event.
Data-driven approach and comfort working directly with event data, querying it, building views, and forming defensible conclusions.
SQL and basic scripting skills.
Working knowledge of the U.S. vehicle regulatory environment, including NHTSA Standing General Order reporting, FMCSA regulations, and hours-of-service rules.
Willingness to work onsite and be on call.
Calmness during live incidents, rigor in safety decisions, and willingness to stop operations when warranted.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with SAE J3016 levels and operational design domain (ODD) concepts.

Responsibilities

Own end-to-end incident response, including detection, notification, severity classification, on-scene coordination, containment decisions, root-cause investigation, corrective action, and closure.
Recommend who should have authority to pause operations and under what conditions, and ensure that authority is effective.
Build a pipeline to triage field telemetry, disengagements, operator reports, and near-miss data into a ranked, actionable queue.
Define the event taxonomy and severity model; manage triage rates, backlog, and time-to-disposition, and make performance visible to engineering and leadership.
Design training and recurrent-qualification programs for safety drivers, autonomous vehicle operators, and remote support staff.
Own training curricula, practical evaluations, and qualification records.
Own operational safety metrics and reporting cadence, and maintain internal records that can withstand outside scrutiny.
Partner with the Head of Safety to ensure operational evidence informs hazard analysis and change assessment.
Conduct initial investigations and develop processes before hiring to scale functions as needed.