Systems Engineer, Safety
Bedrock Robotics · San Francisco
Join the team bringing autonomy to the built world
At Bedrock, we're moving AI out of the lab and onto real job sites. Our team includes veterans who helped launch Waymo, scaled Segment to a $3.2B acquisition, and grew Uber Freight to $5B in revenue. We retrofit the heavy equipment contractors already own, starting with excavators, so experienced crews can safely take on more projects and deliver more of the critical infrastructure our society needs.
In August 2026, Bedrock-equipped excavators began doing fully autonomous, paid work on live commercial job sites. We've more than doubled our customer base since 2025, and our machines now work with contractors across the South, Midwest, and Mid-Atlantic
In October 2026, we raised a $600M Series C co-led by CapitalG and Emergence Capital, bringing our total funding to nearly $1B. We're using it to put more autonomous machines to work, build the field and operations teams behind every deployment, and expand into new machine types and job-site tasks.
This is where algorithms meet steel-toed boots. You'll work alongside construction veterans and world-class engineers to solve physical-world problems that simulations can't touch. If you're ready to do meaningful work on hard problems, we'd love to have you join us.
About the Role
Bedrock is looking for a Systems Engineer with safety engineering experience to define and maintain the system-level architecture that allows autonomous construction equipment to operate safely around people and other equipment. This role sits at the intersection of systems engineering and functional safety: the person in it will decompose system-level requirements across hardware, software, and mechanical subsystems, while ensuring that safety analysis and safety requirements are built into that architecture from the start rather than added afterward.
This role will work directly with the teams designing sensing, compute, and actuation systems, and will be expected to make and defend technical tradeoffs that affect both system performance and safety posture.
What You'll Do
Develop actionable requirements and metrics for the system, with a focus on safety
Support development of the functional safety concept and supporting technical safety concepts for the system
Define and maintain system-level architecture and interface requirements across hardware, software, and mechanical subsystems
Lead or contribute to safety analyses, such as HARA, FMEA, STPA, and FTA, and translate findings into system and hardware requirements
Define safety mechanisms such as redundancy, diagnostics, watchdogs, and graceful degradation, and verify their implementation
Participate in design reviews across hardware, software, and mechanical disciplines, with particular attention to failure modes and safety-relevant interfaces
Work with the V&V lead to establish verification and validation plans, including test methodology
Support root cause analysis for field and test issues where system-level or safety-relevant causes are suspected
What We're Looking For
8+ years of experience in systems engineering, with direct involvement in functional safety work products (e.g., under ISO 13849, ISO 26262, or IEC 61508)
Strong ability to work with data to drive system understanding and feature prioritization and develop trade studies
Experience with verification and validation methods
Experience with safety analysis and risk assessment methods
Experience writing and decomposing system-level requirements, and tracing them through to verification
Familiarity with safety mechanisms such as redundancy, watchdogs, diagnostics, and fault detection
Bachelor's or advanced degree in systems engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, or a related field
Ability to work across hardware, software, and mechanical teams and communicate technical tradeoffs clearly in writing and in review
Preferred Qualifications
Experience with autonomous or robotic systems, particularly those operating in unstructured or dynamic environments
Experience with STPA
Experience with third-party safety assessment (e.g., TÜV, UL)
Familiarity with sensing and compute hardware relevant to autonomy (cameras, lidar, GNSS, IMUs)
Experience with heavy equipment, construction, mining, or agricultural machinery
Bedrock Robotics is an Equal Opportunity Employer
We’re committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace. We consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, ancestry, age, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other protected characteristic.
Reasonable Accommodations
We want our hiring process to be accessible to everyone. If you need an accommodation to participate in the application or interview process, please let your recruiter know so we can support you.
More jobs at Bedrock Robotics · Infrastructure & IT jobs in San Francisco