Staff System Safety Engineer

At Rhoda AI, we're building the full-stack foundation for the next generation of humanoid robots — from high-performance, software-defined hardware to the foundational models and video world models that control it. Our robots are designed to be generalists capable of operating in complex, real-world environments and handling scenarios unseen in training. We work at the intersection of large-scale learning, robotics, and systems, with a research team that includes researchers from Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, and beyond. We're not building a feature; we're building a new computing platform for physical work — and with over $400M raised, we're investing aggressively in the R&D, hardware development, and manufacturing scale-up to make that a reality.

This is a Staff position reporting directly to the Head of Safety and Certification. We're looking for a technical executor with a bias for action, impeccable rigor, and the ability to drive cross-disciplinary teams. The candidate must demonstrate deep technical credibility and the appetite to grow into a leadership position as the safety organization scales.

What You'll Do

• Perform Hazard Analysis and Risk Assessment of humanoid robots across specific customer applications

• Develop Functional Safety Concepts, Functional Safety Requirements, and Technical Safety Requirements

• Perform system-level analyses to derive requirements related to stopping distances, perception, and timing/spatial/force constraints

• Derive requirements for fail-safe and fail-operational behaviors, degraded states, and human-robot interactions

• Develop test cases for verification and validation

• Define, engineer, deploy, and employ system safety validation equipment at HIL, SIL, and system level

What We're Looking For

• B.S. in Electrical Engineering

• Certified Functional Safety Engineer in IEC 61508 or ISO 26262

• Experience designing safety systems for complex electromechanical products with significant safety aspects

• Experience in optics, machine vision, and computer vision

• Evidence of hands-on engineering work — test benches, measurement, and root-cause analysis, not just documentation

• Hands-on experience in verification and validation of safety requirements using HIL and SIL

Nice to Have (But Not Required)

• Experience in humanoid robots, automotive, or autonomous mobile robots (AMR)

• Certified Functional Safety Engineer in Machinery Safety

• Experience designing and deploying industrial automation and safety systems

• Certified SOTIF ISO 21448 engineer

• Experience in automotive ADAS collision avoidance

• Experience with laser sensors, LiDAR, and time-of-flight cameras

• Hands-on experience performing FMEDA per IEC 61508 or ISO 26262

• In-depth understanding of safety-critical architectures for compute, networking, and power distribution

Why This Role

• Define the safety foundation for a humanoid robot operating in real-world human environments — work that is technically deep, consequential, and genuinely unsolved at this scale

• Report directly to the Head of Safety and Certification with a clear path to grow into a leadership role as the safety organization scales alongside the company

• Work at the intersection of functional safety, AI-driven control, and novel electromechanical systems — a combination that doesn't exist anywhere els