Product Safety Engineer

Waymo is an autonomous driving technology company with the mission to be the world's most trusted driver. Since its start as the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, Waymo has focused on building the Waymo Driver—The World's Most Experienced Driver™—to improve access to mobility while saving thousands of lives now lost to traffic crashes. The Waymo Driver powers Waymo’s fully autonomous ride-hail service and can also be applied to a range of vehicle platforms and product use cases. The Waymo Driver has provided over ten million rider-only trips, enabled by its experience autonomously driving over 100 million miles on public roads and tens of billions in simulation across 15+ U.S. states.

The Waymo Safety team works to promote and help to continuously improve the safety of Waymo’s fully autonomous driving technology. Our experts develop safety goals and strategies, and conduct safety engineering analyses to ensure safety is being considered throughout the design and development of our vehicles. The team develops and promotes safety strategies and policies for autonomous vehicles for its work with regulatory authorities, lawmakers, law enforcement and public and non-profit organizations. Our Safety Team also helps advise on compliance with applicable environmental, health, and safety regulations.

In this hybrid role, you will report to Risk Management, Safety Engineer

You will:

• You will manage autonomous vehicle product safety for safeaty excluding collision risk. This includes discovery, evaluation, escalation, mitigation, and acceptance.
• You will partner with domain experts from systems, hardware, software, and operations to build robust risk assessments with sustainable overhead for execution and flexibility in the face of an expanding product scope.
• You will review proposed mitigations, write requirements and test coverage, and identify KPIs for field monitoring - all to ensure risk is sufficient managed with strong regression protection.
• You will propose an evaluation framework and acceptance criteria, drawing on industry practice and standards where applicable. Within the framework, you will architect best practices for risk assessment methodologies, including publishing internal guidance on risk model, data sources and computation methods.
• When necessary, you will translate complex probabilistic risk models and statistical analyses into clear, actionable safety arguments and executive summaries for technical leaders, cross-functional partners, and safety review boards.
• You will champion and promote a robust safety culture and the continuous improvement of the Waymo safety program across the engineering and operations organizations.

You have:

• An advanced degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Engineering or other relevant technical field OR 4 years of practical experience involving safety risk assessments and systems engineering.
• Proven experience managing product risk for physical products or services, using quantitative or semi-quantitative risk models to manage risk.
• Strong foundation in the process of risk management, including the end-to-end lifecycle of risk:  identification, assessment, mitigation and acceptance of risk (e.g. following ISO 31000/31010 or equivalent standards).
• Solid understanding of safety critical system designs and the systems engineering “Verification and Validation” process.
• Demonstrated technical project management skills with the ability to effectively manage multiple parallel, cross-functional safety-critical projects and teams. Ability to thrive in ambiguity.

We prefer:

• Deep background in product safety spanning both physical product design, human-machine interfaces, and service.
• Experience performing system safety risk management in autonomous vehicles, aerospace, defense, robotics, rail, or medical device industries.
• Experience using user studies, data science and testing to drive quantitative risk reduction solutions, safety insights for leadership, and assess performance.
• Success as a safety culture champion, influencing engineering culture, ensuring safety is a first-class citizen in every design discussion. In particular, experience mentoring or training engineering teams on safety-by-design and safety principles.
• Proven leadership experience in working with external partners, contractors, suppliers, and regulatory bodies/auditors.

The expected base salary range for this full-time position across US locations is listed below. Actual starting pay will be based on job-related factors, including exact work location, experience, relevant training and education, and skill level. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for the role location or, if the role can be performed remote, the specific salary range for your preferred location, during the hiring process. 

Waymo employees are also eligible to participate in Waymo’s discretionary annual bonus program, equity incentive plan, and generous Company benefits program, subject to eligibility requirements.