Staff Systems Engineer- Autonomous Vehicle Safety
Description
The Role
The Safety Assurance for Effective Autonomous Driving Software (SAFE-ADS) department is part of the Global Product Safety, System, and Certification (GPSSC) organization at GM. The SAFE-ADS department serves as the central body for automated driving system (ADS) safety and brings together expertise from across the company to establish a comprehensive safety case. GM's vision is zero crashes, zero emissions, and zero congestion - AV safety is at the heart of driving forward this vision.
GM is seeking an Autonomous Vehicle Safety Case Technical Lead to lead the development, maintenance, and continuous improvement of comprehensive safety cases for autonomous vehicle capabilities. This role is responsible for shaping defensible safety arguments, defining claims and sufficiency criteria with domain experts, integrating evidence across technical disciplines, and ensuring the safety case remains aligned with product evolution, regulatory expectations, and industry best practices. This role ensures continuity of the safety case overall and owns the strategy for building a safety case that aligns to industry standards and best practices.
The successful candidate will work across autonomy, AI/ML, platform, systems engineering, functional safety, cybersecurity, product safety, legal, regulatory, and leadership teams to translate complex technical inputs into a coherent and credible safety case strategy. This person will play a key role in architecting our safety case development, assessment and continuous improvement processes, strengthening traceability, improving evidence quality, supporting internal and external assessments, and communicating safety strategies, risks, and decisions to both technical and executive audiences.
What You'll Do
- Lead the development, governance, maintenance, and continuous improvement of a comprehensive safety cases for the Automated Driving System (ADS).
- Define safety case strategies based on industry best practices, standards, and internal safety objectives.
- Partner with cross-functional stakeholders to develop and refine safety case claims, sufficiency criteria, and supporting evidence across domains.
- Author and maintain safety case materials to support product submissions, formal audits, internal reviews, and external assessments.
- Present safety case approaches, methodologies, risks, and progress to internal and external stakeholders, including executives, partners, and regulators.
- Work with regulatory agencies, external consultants, and internal teams to ensure safety-critical applications are appropriately supported by evidence and validation strategiesy.
- Improve compliance and evidence-tracking processes so that safety evidence, claim status, and regulatory requirements are systematically recorded and kept current.
- Identify high-value opportunities to improve traceability and automate portions of safety evidence collection across the engineering lifecycle.
- Surface safety gaps, evidence weaknesses, and emerging risks, and drive timely escalation and resolution through the appropriate forums.
- Integrate technical evidence from autonomy, AI/ML, platform, functional safety, cybersecurity, systems engineering, validation, and product safety into coherent, defensible safety arguments.
- Perform impact analyses when system scope, ODD, platform, or release changes affect the safety case, and determine what claims, criteria, or evidence must be updated.
- Drive alignment between safety case claims and relevant standards, guidance, and best practices, including UL 4600, ISO 26262, ISO 21448, AVSC guidance, and ISO/PAS 8800.
Your Skills & Abilities (Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science, Robotics, Safety Management, or related technical field.
- 7+ years of relevant experience in autonomous driving, ADAS, systems engineering, safety, program leadership, or other complex software-intensive safety-critical environments.
- Demonstrated experience developing, supporting, or assessing safety cases, assurance cases, or equivalent structured safety arguments.
- Deep knowledge of functional safety and safety assurance concepts, including ISO 26262 (FuSa), ISO 21448 (SOTIF), ISO 8800 (AI) and UL 4600.
- Strong ability to decompose high-level safety goals into clear, implementable requirements and evidence needs for hardware and software teams.
- Experience leading large, cross-functional technical efforts with enterprise-level scope and multiple stakeholders.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to translate complex technical concepts for non-technical audiences.
- Ability to synthesize ambiguous or distributed technical data into clear safety arguments, decisions, and recommendations.
- Passion for autonomous vehicle technology and advancing safe deployment of ADS capabilities.
What Will Give You a Competitive Edge (Preferred Qualifications
- Advanced degree (MS, PhD) in Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science, Robotics, Safety Management, or a related field.
- Prior experience in an autonomous vehicle or advanced mobility regulatory, certification, or safety assurance role.
- Advanced understanding of AI/ML safety validation techniques, statistical or probabilistic safety arguments, and evidence sufficiency evaluation.
- Familiarity with Goal Structuring Notation (GSN) or similar structured argumentation frameworks.
- Experience with requirements management, traceability, and evidence management practices in safety-critical development lifecycles.
- Experience working in fast-paced, high-growth engineering organizations with frequent software releases and evolving system scope.
- Experience engaging with external assessors, regulators, standards bodies, or industry consortia.
Compensation: The compensation information is a good faith estimate only. It is based on what a successful applicant might be paid in accordance with applicable state laws. The compensation may not be representative for positions located outside of the California Bay Area.
- The salary range for this role is $160,200 to $290,700. The actual base salary a successful candidate will be offered within this range will vary based on factors relevant to the position.
- Bonus Potential: An incentive pay program offers payouts based on company performance, job level, and individual performance
Benefits: GM offers a variety of health and wellbeing benefit programs. Benefit options include medical, dental, vision, Health Savings Account, Flexible Spending Accounts, retirement savings plan, sickness and accident benefits, life insurance, paid vacation & holidays, tuition assistance programs, employee assistance program, GM vehicle discounts and more.
Company Vehicle: Upon successful completion of a motor vehicle report review, you will be eligible to participate in a company vehicle evaluation program, through which you will be assigned a General Motors vehicle to drive and evaluate. Note: program participants are required to purchase/lease a qualifying GM vehicle every four years unless one of a limited number of exceptions applies.
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GM does not provide immigration-related sponsorship for this role. Do not apply for this role if you will need GM immigration sponsorship now or in the future. This includes direct company sponsorship, entry of GM as the immigration employer of record on a government form, and any work authorization requiring a written submission or other immigration support from the company (e.g., H1-B, OPT, STEM OPT, CPT, TN, J-1, etc.)
This role is categorized as hybrid. This means the selected candidate is expected to report to a specific location at least 3 times a week {or other frequency dictated by their manager}.
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