We’re Blue River, a team of innovators driven to create intelligent machinery that solves monumental problems for our customers. We empower our customers – farmers, construction crews, and foresters - to implement safer and more sustainable solutions, driving increased profitability with less reliance on scarce labor. We believe that focusing on the small stuff – pixel-by-pixel and task-by-task - leads to big gains. With our partners at John Deere, we have the ability to bring innovative computer vision, machine learning, robotics, and product management solutions to scale production, maximizing their potential impact.

Our people are at the heart of what we do. Through cross-disciplinary collaboration, this mission-driven and daring team is eager to define the new frontier of mobile robotics. We are always asking hard questions, rapidly iterating, and getting our boots in the field and on-site to figure it out. We won’t give up until we’ve made a tangible and positive impact on the planet.

Blue River Technology is based in Santa Clara, CA. This position can be remote in the US.

Summary

Our team has been working to provide operator-free automation for John Deere vehicles since 2018. As new vehicle platforms begin their autonomy journey, a key team member is the Principal Systems Safety Engineer. As a Principal Systems Safety Engineer, you will be a leader responsible for delivering trust in our autonomous solutions. In this role, you will lead the creation of safety frameworks for our new end-to-end (E2E) robotics initiative, ensuring trust in our autonomous systems through rigorous validation and verification. You will evaluate scenarios that our vehicles encounter, lead safety reviews, and establish safety requirements.

A well qualified candidate will have deep technical experience contributing to safety frameworks for autonomy with a creative solution-oriented approach. You will work with our engineering teams to distill this framework into actionable tasks to deploy and scale autonomy. The schedule is ambitious and the agricultural season waits for no one. We tackle our objectives with multi-functional engineering teams consisting of systems and embedded software, test and QA, mechatronics, computer vision and machine learning engineers. Our team is empowered to figure out how to overcome challenges, plan, and prioritize work; everyone is a key contributor.

Employment Type: Full-Time
Work Location: Remote in the US
Visa sponsorship is available for this position.

Job Responsibilities

The main job responsibilities include:

Provide a clear execution path for engineering teams by deriving technical safety requirements using your preferred tools.
Envision and implement robust frameworks for the validation and verification (V&V) of end-to-end (E2E) robotics solutions.
Apply mental agility to navigate complex, evolving technical challenges and drive cross-functional problem solving.
Conduct risk assessments to inform safety reviews and support feature concept development.
Work with the data infrastructure team to strategically identify data and tools needed to monitor and quantify real-world fleet performance.

Required Experience and Skills

8+ years of relevant engineering work experience that includes risk assessment/management and product / functional safety.
3+ years of experience developing safety-critical electronic and embedded systems.
Experience conducting risk assessments for autonomous ground vehicles and experience conducting safety reviews (HARA, STPA, FMEA, etc).
Demonstrated ability to architect comprehensive V&V frameworks for end-to-end robotics applications.
Exceptional mental agility, with a track record of thriving in ambiguous, fast-paced environments.
Ability to clearly communicate verbally and in writing with legal and regulatory awareness.
Ability to quickly work in a start-up environment, help team members outside of your lane, and manage multiple ongoing projects.
Knowledge of ISO-18497, ISO-26262, ISO/PAS 21448 or similar (DO-178, ARP-4754, IEC 62304, etc).
Strong Systems Engineering fundamentals.
BS in Electromechanical/Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related technical fields.

Preferred Experience and Skills

Proven experience in the safety and verification of complex Machine Learning (ML) systems and autonomous robotics.
Hands-on experience in embedded system development, software development, and/or verification and validation of such systems.
Safety analysis for L3-L5 autonomous vehicles.
Experience with embedded Linux, ROS2, and/or AWS.
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Principal Autonomous Systems Safety Engineer at Blue River Technology