Technical Product Manager (Safety & Compliance)

Caterpillar Inc.•Irving, TX

5d•$128,470 - $208,770•Onsite

About The Position

The Technical Product Manager – Safety & Regulatory Compliance defines and executes the product strategy, roadmap, requirements, and governance framework for safely developing, validating, deploying, and operating autonomous, semi-autonomous, and remote-controlled construction machines. The role owns product-level safety and compliance across the machine, autonomy and remote-control systems, supporting infrastructure, and operational environment. This includes safety requirements, functional safety, hazard and risk management, safety cases, regulatory readiness, compliance traceability, and certification support. The role translates safety, regulatory, and operational risks into prioritized product capabilities and measurable acceptance criteria. It works across product management, systems engineering, functional safety, autonomy and robotics, machine controls, remote operations, cybersecurity, validation, quality, legal and regulatory teams, architecture, and customer/site teams to ensure safety is engineered as an end-to-end system property. The position is based onsite five days a week at Caterpillar’s Irving, Texas office. Domestic relocation assistance is available; visa sponsorship is not available. The stated salary range is $128,470 to $208,770. Benefits are subject to plan eligibility and include medical, dental and vision coverage; paid time off; 401(k) savings plans; HSA and FSA options; health lifestyle programs; an Employee Assistance Program; voluntary benefits and employee discounts; career development; incentive bonus; disability benefits; life insurance; parental leave; adoption benefits; and tuition reimbursement.

Requirements

Knowledge of safety principles for autonomous, semi-autonomous, and remote-controlled mobile machinery, including hazards related to machine decision-making, sensing and perception, localization, planning, control, communications, human-machine interaction, remote operation, degraded operation, fallback, and safe-state behavior.
Working knowledge of functional-safety concepts, safety-related control systems, hazard analysis, risk assessment, safety integrity or performance requirements, verification, validation, and safety-case development for complex electromechanical and software-intensive systems.
Ability to identify applicable regulations, standards, and market or site requirements; translate them into a product compliance strategy; manage applicability and interpretation with subject-matter experts; and maintain readiness as requirements evolve.
Ability to decompose product-level safety outcomes into system and subsystem requirements and maintain bidirectional traceability across hazards, requirements, architecture, implementation, tests, and compliance evidence.
Ability to facilitate structured hazard identification, assess risk, prioritize mitigation, evaluate residual risk, and manage safety issues and change throughout the product lifecycle.
Ability to build and prioritize roadmaps and backlogs, make tradeoffs, define measurable outcomes, manage dependencies, and balance product value, delivery needs, technical feasibility, safety, and compliance.
Ability to align engineering, safety, validation, legal and regulatory, operations, customers, and leadership around safety objectives, decisions, evidence, and release readiness without relying solely on direct authority.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex safety and regulatory topics to product, engineering, executive, customer, and regulator audiences.
Ability to work effectively with engineering, validation, functional safety, cybersecurity, legal and regulatory, quality, operations, customer/site teams, and senior leadership to resolve cross-domain safety issues and make risk-informed product decisions.

Nice To Haves

4 or more years of experience spanning technical product management, autonomy/robotics, functional safety, systems engineering, machine controls, remote operations, safety engineering, regulatory compliance, or related technical leadership roles.
Demonstrated experience leading safety and compliance strategy from concept and requirements through roadmap execution, validation, deployment, and lifecycle support.
Experience with autonomous or semi-autonomous mobile machinery and/or remote operator control systems in earth-moving, mining, construction, agriculture, industrial, automotive, or other safety-critical applications.
Working knowledge of standards relevant to the product domain, such as ISO 17757, ISO 15817, the ISO 19014 functional-safety series, ISO 12100, and other applicable regional or machine-specific requirements.
Experience facilitating or applying hazard analysis and risk assessment methods and converting identified risks into implementable safety requirements and validated mitigations.
Experience with functional-safety concepts for safety-related control systems, including performance requirements, architecture and hardware/software considerations, diagnostics, fault response, and verification evidence.
Experience defining safety requirements for emergency stops, controlled stops, obstacle/person detection, speed and motion limitations, geofencing or operating boundaries, control-mode transitions, remote-control link loss, degraded operation, fallback, fault recovery, and safe-state behavior.
Experience building or contributing to safety cases, compliance matrices, requirements-to-test traceability, regulatory submissions, audits, certification activities, or formal release-readiness reviews.

Responsibilities

Own and prioritize the Safety & Regulatory Compliance product backlog based on customer and business value, safety objectives, hazard severity, risk reduction, regulatory obligations, and program maturity.
Define the safety and compliance product roadmap for autonomous, semi-autonomous, and remote-controlled construction machine capabilities from proof of concept through production deployment and lifecycle support.
Partner with the Safety & Regulations division to translate standards, regulations, corporate policies, safety analyses, and operational constraints into product and functional requirements, acceptance criteria, and release criteria; monitor regulatory and standards changes and assess their impact.
Lead product-level safety planning and cross-functional hazard identification and risk-management activities, including system hazard analyses, machine-control safety analyses, operational risk assessments, and mitigation planning.
Partner with functional safety and engineering teams to define and maintain safety-related control functions, performance levels, design constraints, verification expectations, and evidence demonstrating effective risk controls.
Drive end-to-end traceability from hazards and regulatory obligations through safety requirements, architecture and design controls, hardware and software implementation, verification and validation, residual risk, and compliance evidence.
Define product-level safety readiness and compliance gates for demonstrations, pilots, releases, and production deployment, including go/no-go criteria, unresolved-risk disposition, exceptions, and escalation paths.
Partner with Cybersecurity and Systems Engineering to include safety-relevant security threats, data and communications dependencies, software updates, and connected-system failure modes in the overall safety argument.
Build and maintain the product safety case and compliance evidence strategy; support audits, regulatory reviews, conformity assessments, certification activities, customer safety reviews, and deployment approvals.
Establish and monitor safety and compliance KPIs, including open safety risks, mitigation closure, verification coverage, safety-requirement traceability, evidence completeness, audit findings, and release readiness.
Communicate safety readiness, regulatory status, key risks, mitigation progress, certification milestones, and release constraints to technical teams, program leadership, customers, and other stakeholders.