BS or advanced degree in engineering, physics, or relevant field, or equivalent practical experience.
10+ years in test planning and experimental design for safety-critical autonomous systems, emphasizing safety and repeatability.
Proven experience in building and leading interdisciplinary teams across software, hardware, test, and data science.
Strong knowledge of sensing and computing technologies such as cameras, lidar, radar, GNSS, IMUs, and embedded systems.
Proficient in data analysis and test automation (Python, C/C++) for result interrogation.
Experience coordinating parallel testing activities with non-colocated teams across multiple sites.
Strong judgment skills regarding the proven readiness of systems.
Responsibilities
Design safety validation metrics and scenario libraries for system behaviors.
Develop a generalized validation architecture to streamline evidence collection across different machines and tasks.
Manage requirements decomposition and traceability from mission intent to subsystem details.
Select appropriate validation strategies and tools to ensure system readiness across a growing fleet.
Validate hardware and functional safety for newly ported sensor and computational kits on customer machines.
Build and grow a multidisciplinary team of engineers and data scientists in sync with machine deployment.
Establish KPIs and create clear reports for leadership and stakeholders to assess system maturity and readiness.
Benefits
Flexible work roles with consideration for diverse applicants and locations.
Support for visibility in the field through external contributions like publications and research leadership.
Agile work environment in a startup focused on balancing safety with rapid progress.
Opportunities to shape new best practices in a pioneering industry.
Full Job Description
We are seeking a Head of Validation and Systems Engineering to lead validation, verification, and systems engineering as an integrated discipline. In this role, you will define the criteria for every unsupervised deployment and serve as the technical authority on readiness, participating in critical launch decisions. You will develop a validation architecture where adding a new machine or capability is an incremental, evidence-based process. Rather than inheriting old frameworks, you will leverage cutting-edge research and create new best practices for an emerging industry.
Our machines already operate unsupervised at customer sites. Everything ahead-introducing more machine types, tackling new tasks each quarter, expanding to new sites-pushes the boundaries of the safety standards that have brought us this far.
What you will own
Safety validation of the system. Design the metrics, scenario libraries, and architectural coverage that quantify end-to-end behavioral safety - and make them hold up as the machine set and task set expand.
A validation architecture that generalizes. Decide what evidence is platform-independent and what must be re-established per machine, per task, per site. Turn the safety case into something composable instead of something rewritten.
Systems engineering. Own requirements decomposition and traceability from mission-level intent through subsystems, and use validation findings to expose the gaps, ambiguities, and conflicts that feed back into design.
V&V strategy and infrastructure. Choose the right instrument for each claim - log playback, closed-loop physics simulation, structured proving-ground testing, or on-site work - and specify the tooling and sim capability needed to make those instruments trustworthy across a growing fleet.
Hardware and functional safety. Validate the sensing, compute, and actuation kit we install on customer machines, including functional-safety readiness of safety-critical paths, as that kit is ported onto new platforms.
The org. Grow a team of software, systems, test, and hardware engineers plus data scientists, and scale it ahead of the machine count rather than behind it.
Decision-grade reporting. Define the KPIs - verification coverage, defect trends, release readiness, system maturity - and turn dense test data into the small number of charts that let leadership, customers, and insurers make a call.
What the first year looks like
A V&V framework and safety case structure that spans multiple machine types and an expanding task set, and that engineering, customers, and insurers all recognize as rigorous.
A scenario and coverage model built for the machines and tasks we have not shipped yet, not just the ones we have.
Readiness criteria that generalize - so the second platform, and the tenth, clear the bar faster than the first did without clearing a lower one.
A team that outlives any single launch.
Background
BS or advanced degree in engineering, physics, or another technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
10+ years in test planning and experimental design for safety-critical autonomous or robotic systems, with a bias toward safety and repeatability.
Track record building and leading multidisciplinary technical organizations - software, systems, hardware, test, and data science under one roof.
Depth in sensing and compute: cameras, lidar, radar, GNSS, IMUs, edge compute, embedded controllers.
Fluency in data analysis and test automation (Python, C/C++) sufficient to interrogate results yourself, not only to review them.
Experience running many parallel test activities across non-colocated teams, sites, and stakeholders.
Judgment about when a claim is proven and when it merely looks proven.
Ways to stand out
You have taken a driverless or unsupervised system through to real deployment and personally held the readiness gate - and then had to do it again for a second platform.
You have scaled a validation program across a heterogeneous fleet, multiple sites, or successive hardware generations.
You have authored or led a formal safety case, or contributed to safety standards work (UL 4600, ISO 26262, ISO 21448, or off-road equivalents).
Functional safety experience on vertically integrated or custom hardware.
Familiarity with heavy construction machines - excavators, articulated dump trucks, dozers, wheel loaders, motor graders.
A record of external technical contribution: publications, keynotes, standards bodies, or research leadership. We want this role visible in the field, and we will support that.
How we work
We are a startup, so we look for engineers with an appetite for agility. We do not compromise on safety and we still find ways to move extremely fast - the entire point of this role is that those two things are compatible when the evidence is good enough.
