Lead Safety Engineer - Robotics

About the Team

Our Robotics team is focused on unlocking general-purpose robotics and pushing towards AGI-level intelligence in dynamic, real-world settings. Working across the entire model stack, we integrate cutting-edge hardware and software to explore a broad range of robotic form factors. We strive to seamlessly blend high-level AI capabilities with the constraints of physical systems to improve peoples’ lives.

About the Role

We are seeking a Lead Robotics Safety Engineer to define and lead the product safety strategy for our robotics program. You will work closely with leadership, engineering, research, legal, and policy teams to ensure safety is integrated into our products from the earliest stages of development through deployment.

This role combines product safety, regulatory strategy, systems engineering, and risk management. You will help shape how we think about safety across robotic platforms, influence product architecture and development decisions, and ensure our systems are designed to meet both current and emerging regulatory expectations.

You will serve as a subject matter expert on robotics safety standards, regulatory frameworks, and safety engineering practices while helping establish the long-term safety strategy for our products and organization.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. This role will be expected to be in office 4 days per week and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will

• Define and lead the product safety strategy for robotic systems across the development lifecycle.

• Monitor and influence emerging regulatory frameworks, industry standards, and policy developments relevant to robotics and autonomous systems.

• Partner with engineering teams to translate safety requirements into product architecture, design decisions, and engineering requirements.

• Develop and maintain system-level hazard analyses, risk assessments, and safety cases for robotic products.

• Establish safety requirements, verification strategies, and evidence-generation plans to support product development and future certification activities.

• Collaborate with legal, policy, and leadership teams to assess regulatory risks and inform long-term product strategy.

• Partner with hardware, software, controls, and research teams to identify hazards and develop mitigations throughout the development process.

• Lead system-level hazard analyses, HARA activities, FMEAs, and other structured risk assessment processes to identify hazards, evaluate risks, and drive mitigation strategies throughout product development.

• Represent the company in discussions with standards bodies, industry groups, regulators, and external safety experts when appropriate.

• Help build and scale the safety engineering function as the robotics organization grows.

You might thrive in this role if you

• Enjoy applying first-principles thinking to complex safety and risk management challenges.

• Are comfortable navigating ambiguity where regulations, standards, and technology are evolving simultaneously.

• Can balance technical, regulatory, operational, and business considerations when making recommendations.

• Enjoy working across disciplines and influencing engineering decisions without direct authority.

• Are passionate about building products that are both innovative and demonstrably safe.

Preferred qualifications

• Deep expertise in product safety, functional safety, systems safety, robotics safety, or related disciplines.

• Experience working with safety and regulatory frameworks such as ISO 10218, ISO 13849, IEC 61508, ISO 12100, ANSI/RIA standards, or comparable safety standards.

• Experience developing hazard analyses, risk assessments, safety cases, or certification strategies for complex electromechanical systems.

• Familiarity with robotics, autonomous systems, industrial equipment, consumer products, medical devices, automotive systems, aerospace systems, or other safety-critical technologies.

• Experience working with regulators, standards organizations, certification bodies, or industry working groups.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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