Staff Functional Safety Engineer

Ford Motor • Palo Alto, CA

14h • Hybrid

About The Position

Ford's Electric Vehicles, Digital and Design (EVDD) team is responsible for delivering the company's vision of a fully electric transportation future. This team is customer-obsessed, entrepreneurial, and data-driven, dedicated to providing an industry-leading customer experience for electric vehicle buyers and owners. The Staff Functional Safety Engineer will be responsible for ensuring the safety of complex electronic control features. This role involves leading the end-to-end safety lifecycle from concept through production, ensuring compliance with ISO 26262. The position requires a blend of hardware-level analytical rigor, system-level architectural thinking, and leadership to foster a robust safety culture across cross-functional engineering teams. Key responsibilities include defining safety architecture, guiding technical design decisions, and ensuring program readiness through quantitative risk assessment and fail-operational strategies.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree or higher in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Physical Sciences, or equivalent combination of relevant education and experience.
• Minimum of 4+ years of functional safety engineering experience in safety-critical systems within the automotive, aerospace, or industrial sectors.
• Deep expertise in the application and assessment of ISO 26262:2018 and familiarity with ISO 21448 (SOTIF).
• Extensive experience leading and performing complex safety analyses (HARA, FMEA, FTA, DFA, STPA) for autonomous or highly complex E/E systems.
• Strong understanding of failure mode analysis for complex electrical designs, ASICs, and advanced electrical circuits.
• Demonstrated technical project management skills with the ability to manage multiple parallel, cross-functional safety-critical projects.
• Deep understanding of embedded control system development, embedded software, and verification and validation (V&V) processes.
• Background in data science and statistics with a focus on analyzing performance for quantitative risk reduction and safety assessment.
• Proven leadership experience working with external partners, suppliers, and regulatory bodies or auditors.
• Excellent communication skills with a track record of leading technical meetings with leadership teams and providing mentorship to engineering peers.

Responsibilities

• Lead and execute end-to-end functional safety analyses, including HARA, FMEA, and FTA, to identify potential hazards and quantitatively assess safety risks across the autonomous system.
• Define and manage the comprehensive set of functional safety requirements and safety concepts that govern system architecture and design choices.
• Lead the development and assessment of full safety cases for ASIL A- D products, managing the lifecycle from initial concept to production.
• Collaborate with system and hardware design engineers to develop and document hardware-level functional safety requirements and decompose module-level requirements into ECU-level requirements.
• Derive and verify technical safety concepts and hardware metrics, including PMHF (Probability Metric for Hardware Failure), SPFM, and LFM, to meet ISO 26262 Part 5 and Part 11 requirements.
• Oversee and optimize the program safety readiness process and metrics.
• Serve as a core safety expert in cross-functional design reviews and technical discussions, ensuring safety goals are met effectively throughout the development lifecycle.
• Champion and promote a robust safety culture and the continuous improvement of the safety program across the engineering organization.
• Identify and provide training, coaching, and mentoring to peers and junior engineers to establish technical best practices.

Benefits

• Immediate medical, dental, vision and prescription drug coverage
• Flexible family care days, paid parental leave, new parent ramp-up programs, subsidized back-up child care and more
• Family building benefits including adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, fertility treatments, and more
• Vehicle discount program for employees and family members and management leases
• Tuition assistance
• Established and active employee resource groups
• Paid time off for individual and team community service
• A generous schedule of paid holidays, including the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day
• Paid time off and the option to purchase additional vacation time.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior