Lead Functional Safety Engineer

Skills

About the Role

You will lead functional safety engineering for industrial robots, autonomous mobile systems, and motion-control and drivetrain architectures. You will own the complete safety lifecycle, from hazard and risk analysis through requirements, architecture, implementation, verification, and validation. You will develop safety plans, integrate safety work into quality processes, assess machinery risks, design and review safety architectures, analyze failures, and plan validation activities. You will also support certification, advise engineers on safety standards, contribute to safety-related PLC and embedded implementation, and provide customer-facing safety guidance.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical, Mechanical, or a related engineering discipline.
• 10+ years of functional safety experience in robotics, autonomous systems, industrial automation, automotive, aerospace, or other safety-critical machinery domains.
• Hands-on experience with servo drives, inverters, motor controls, encoders, brakes, safety PLCs, safety I/O, and safety-rated networks.
• Experience owning the complete safety lifecycle from hazard and risk analysis through validation.
• Ability to evaluate manipulator and mobile-platform or drivetrain hazards.
• Experience with Structured Text, Ladder Logic, or Function Block Diagram, PLCs, microcontrollers, and safety-related embedded systems.
• Ability to determine failure detection, safe-state behavior, and quantitative PL/SIL justification.
• Functional safety certification such as TÜV Functional Safety Engineer, CFSE, CFSP, or CMSE is preferred.
• Willingness to travel domestically and internationally as required.

Responsibilities

• Create and maintain the Functional Safety Management Plan.
• Integrate safety activities, reviews, approvals, deviations, corrective actions, and audits into the Quality Management System.
• Perform machinery risk assessments according to ISO 12100.
• Define hazards, safe states, safety functions, and required PLr or SIL.
• Support compliance and certification activities with certification bodies, laboratories, and external assessors.
• Interpret safety regulations and standards and advise engineering teams on their application.
• Develop and review safety architectures for emergency stops, protective stops, safe torque off, safe stopping, speed limitation, brake control, restart prevention, and protective sensing.
• Apply ISO 13849-1/-2 and IEC 62061, including redundancy, diagnostics, MTTFd/PFH calculations, common-cause failure analysis, and validation.
• Analyze robotic and drivetrain failure modes.
• Define safety interfaces across PLCs, controllers, drives, motors, brakes, encoders, scanners, contactors, and safety I/O.
• Apply safety-rated communication protocols including PROFIsafe, CIP Safety, and EtherCAT/FSoE.
• Perform HARA, FMEA, FMECA, FMEDA, DFMEA, fault tree analysis, fault-injection testing, and safety-case analyses.
• Perform mechanical and structural failure analysis for safety-critical components.
• Plan and execute verification and validation activities for safety functions and fault conditions.
• Support safety-related PLC and embedded implementation, component selection, IEC 61131-3 programming, operating procedures, training, and troubleshooting.
• Engage in customer-facing technical meetings and provide functional-safety guidance.

Hiring Process

Applications may be reviewed with AI tools; resumes and responses may be analyzed, and application materials assessed for inconsistencies or verification signals. The recruitment team uses these tools, while final hiring decisions are made by humans.