Systems Safety Engineer
$170k - $225k USD
About Overland AI
Founded in 2022 and headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Overland AI is transforming land operations for modern defense. The company leverages over a decade of advanced research in robotics and machine learning, as well as a field-test forward ethos, to deliver combined capabilities for unit commanders. Our OverDrive autonomy stack enables ground vehicles to navigate and operate off-road in any terrain without GPS or direct operator control. Our intuitive OverWatch C2 interface provides commanders with precise coordination capabilities essential for mission success.
Overland AI has secured funding from prominent defense tech investors including 8VC and Point 72, and built trusted partnerships with DARPA, the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, and Special Operations Command. Backed by eight-figure contracts across the Department of Defense, we are strengthening national security by iterating closely with end users engaged in tactical operations.
Role Summary
Overland AI is hiring Systems Safety Engineers to lead system safety engineering across our autonomous vehicles and programs. These roles sit within the Systems Engineering, Integration, and Test (SEIT) organization and partner closely with systems engineers, designers, and test teams to ensure safety is fully integrated into requirements, architecture, design, integration, and verification activities.
As a Systems Safety Engineer, you will develop and execute system safety programs across the full lifecycle—from concept and requirements definition through architecture, integration, testing, and field operations. You will produce and maintain standard safety artifacts aligned with DoD and industry expectations, including MIL-STD-882E–based analyses, UL 4600, ATEC safety releases, and hazard tracking, while working cross-functionally with hardware, software, test, and operations teams.
Safety Engineers collaborate closely with those building the system while maintaining independence in safety assessment. You will objectively evaluate hazards, risk controls, verification evidence, and operational suitability to support rigorous, defensible, and auditable safety determinations. This role emphasizes collaboration and alignment: safety analyses are developed alongside evolving system designs and remain tightly connected to system requirements, baselines, test plans, and operational concepts.
As Overland AI scales and pursues multiple safety-certified deployments in parallel, these roles are critical to sustaining disciplined engineering execution and credible safety approvals.
Key Responsibilities
System Safety Engineering
- Develop and maintain system safety analyses in accordance with MIL-STD-882E and applicable customer or regulatory guidance.
- Perform PHAs, FHAs, SHAs, SSHAs, and O&SHAs as appropriate to system maturity, incorporating operational concepts, mission scenarios, and anticipated use cases to assess safety impacts and residual risk.
- Apply standard system safety analysis techniques (e.g., hazard analysis, FMEA/FMECA, fault tree analysis, functional hazard assessment) as appropriate to system scope and maturity.
- Define safety requirements and constraints and ensure they are correctly flowed into system and subsystem requirements.
- Review system architectures, autonomy behaviors, software-controlled functions, integration approaches, and operational workflows to identify hazards and inform safety requirements and constraints.
- Facilitate cross-functional safety discussions with system and technical leads to surface hazards, align on safety intent, and ensure safety considerations are consistently integrated into system decisions.
- Provide independent technical assessment of system designs and proposed mitigations, offering objective safety insights that inform system requirements, architectural decisions, and operational procedures.
- Analyze software-controlled and autonomy-driven behaviors as part of system hazard identification, ensuring software-based safety controls and constraints are captured, traced, and supported by verification evidence.
Hazard Tracking & Safety Case Development
- Maintain hazard tracking with clear traceability from hazards through mitigations, safety requirements, and verification activities.
- Develop and maintain the system safety case, integrating hazard analyses, design controls, operational assumptions, and verification evidence into a coherent, defensible argument for safe operation.
- Ensure software-based safety mitigations (e.g., autonomy behaviors, fault detection, failsafe logic) are explicitly captured within the safety case and supported by appropriate verification evidence.
- Ensure the safety case evolves alongside system design, configuration changes, and operational refinement and is consistently integrated into system decisions.
Test & Verification Integration
- Define safety-focused test objectives, acceptance criteria, and verification strategies aligned with system requirements and operational use cases.
- Collaborate with Test & Evaluation teams to ensure safety-driven objectives are represented in test plans, procedures, and acceptance criteria.
- Participate in lab, vehicle, and field test events to independently assess safety performance and mitigation effectiveness.
- Review and evaluate verification evidence to confirm safety controls are effective, sufficient, and correctly implemented, and to support readiness and risk acceptance decisions.
- Capture and organize verification evidence that supports safety assessments, readiness reviews, and release decisions.
- Support readiness reviews, safety releases, and risk acceptance processes.
Customer & Certification Support
- Prepare safety documentation and technical inputs required for ATEC-led evaluations, customer reviews, and non-DoD certification or approval efforts.
- Support technical reviews and safety discussions with government and commercial stakeholders.
- Clearly communicate safety rationale, risk posture, and supporting evidence to internal leadership and external reviewers.
- Help translate technical safety work into clear, defensible narratives for external stakeholders.
Process, Standards, & Scaling
- Contribute to company safety processes, templates, and standards to support multiple concurrent programs.
- Help establish consistent safety practices across prototypes, fielded systems, and future production platforms.
- Mentor engineers and help raise overall system safety maturity within the organization.
What You’ll Need to Succeed
- Bachelor’s degree in Engineering or related technical discipline.
- Experience performing system safety engineering for complex systems (autonomy, robotics, vehicles, aerospace, defense, or similar).
- Knowledge of existing standards and regulations relevant in the automotive industry, esp. ISO 26262, ISO 21448, UL4600, MIL-STD-883E, JSSSEH.
- Experience developing and maintaining safety artifacts suitable for external review, esp. SAR
- Ability to operate independently and exercise sound engineering judgment in risk assessment.
- Comfort working in hands-on, fast-moving environments with real hardware and field testing.
What Will Set You Apart
- Direct experience supporting ATEC, DoD test agencies, or similar certification authorities.
- Direct experience in the design and development of autonomous vehicles or advanced ADAS applications
- Experience with autonomous or semi-autonomous systems.
- Experience supporting both developmental testing and operational/test readiness activities.
- Experience with SysML modeling and Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) tools (Cameo, Goal Structured Notation)
- Experience with managing requirements (Jama, Doors) and issue tracking (JIRA)
Location
The preferred location for this position is onsite in Seattle, WA.
Compensation
Annual Base Pay: $170,000 – $225,000 USD
Benefits
- Equity compensation
- Best-in-class healthcare, dental, and vision plans
- Unlimited PTO
- 401(k) with company match
- Parental leave