Senior Technical Project Manager — Safety Case (Vehicle / Hardware)

Aurora Innovation•Mountain View, CA

12d•$150,000 - $240,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Aurora is seeking a Senior Technical Project Manager to lead the Vehicle/Hardware safety case to completion. This role, reporting to the Safety Case & Quality Management team, involves end-to-end program management for the Vehicle/Hardware safety case. Responsibilities include planning, coordinating engineers for claims and evidence, tracking progress and risks, and driving claims to closure to support release decisions. The position acts as a liaison between Hardware Engineering, Vehicle Platform teams, Systems/Safety Engineering, and the Safety Org, ensuring the safety case remains on schedule, sufficient, and audit-ready. The work directly validates the safety of Aurora-equipped vehicles for public roads. The role involves translating the enterprise Safety Case Lifecycle Process into practical execution for the Vehicle/Hardware module, including scoping claims, defining completion criteria and timelines, orchestrating evidence development, assessing sufficiency against Aurora's Maturity Rubric, managing unsatisfied claims as accepted risks, and maintaining evidence freshness. The individual will maintain visibility into safety case health and progress, with reporting feeding into Safety Review Board Go/No-Go decisions. This is a hands-on technical role combining project management, hardware safety-case engineering judgment, and cross-functional leadership.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or equivalent applicable technical experience.
5+ years of experience in technical program/project management, hardware/systems engineering, functional safety, or safety case / assurance-case development, including leading cross-functional technical programs to schedule.
Demonstrated experience in a safety-critical hardware domain (e.g. automotive, aerospace, industrial, medical devices).
Proven program-management skills: planning, tracking, risk and dependency management, and driving deliverables to closure across multiple contributing teams.
Working knowledge of safety/assurance case methods (claims–arguments–evidence or GSN) and of ISO 26262 (especially Part 5, hardware development, and the hardware metrics in Part 5/Annexes), with familiarity in ASPICE.
Familiarity with hardware safety evidence - hardware architecture and design, FMEA/FMEDA, diagnostic coverage, FIT-rate / PMHF and reliability analyses, component and HW verification/qualification artifacts - under document and configuration control, with the technical depth to judge sufficiency.
Proficiency with Jira and Confluence for workflow and program tracking, and with requirements/traceability tooling (e.g. Jama); able to build and maintain status dashboards and reports.
Excellent communication and stakeholder-management skills, with the ability to convey status, risk, and recommendations clearly to engineering teams and senior leadership.
Ability to work independently, lead a cross-functional program, and influence without direct authority across hardware, vehicle platform, and safety organizations.

Nice To Haves

Advanced degree in a relevant technical field, and/or a program-management credential (e.g. PMP).
Familiarity with UL 4600 (autonomous systems safety), and ISO/SAE 21434 (cybersecurity) as complementary standards.
Hands-on experience with hardware safety analysis tooling (e.g. FMEDA / reliability tools) and with sensor, compute, or actuation hardware in a vehicle context.
Experience preparing for or supporting external assessments (e.g. TÜV, ISO 26262 hardware assessments) and managing findings to closure.
Experience with the transition of a safety-critical hardware product from development to commercial deployment, including across multiple vehicle platforms.
Experience building quality/assurance metrics and dashboards (e.g. AWS QuickSight, S3, Lambda) for evidence-health monitoring.
Experience developing process and training materials for safety case or QMS adoption.

Responsibilities

Own the program management of the Vehicle/Hardware safety case end to end - planning, scoping, scheduling, and driving claims to closure across releases.
Scope claims impacted by each milestone and platform change, set Definitions of Done and timelines, and coordinate the engineers who produce the hardware evidence.
Drive evidence to sufficiency - released, version-controlled, and assessed - and progress each claim through the safety case workflow to closure while preserving independence.
Manage safety risk for unsatisfied claims through accepted RISK tickets, and keep the live picture of safety case health, progress, and evidence freshness.
Compile hardware inputs to release closure reports, support SRB Go/No-Go decisions, and drive continuous improvement of Definitions of Done and the Framework.
Support internal and external safety case audits and assessments, and mentor claim and evidence owners on the process and tooling.