Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies
Staff Functional Safety Engineer
$171K–$235K
Irvine, California · Hybrid · Staff · Full-time · Posted Sep 8, 2026
- Experience
- 10+ years in the automotive industry (or equivalent).
- Education
- Degree in Electrical/Electronic, Mechatronics, or similar engineering discipline.
About the job
Own functional safety strategy and technical standards for propulsion, dynamics, and chassis features across multiple vehicle programs, leading safety analyses and validation through Start of Production sign-off.
What you'll do
- Define safety architecture, redundancy strategies, ASIL decomposition, requirements methods, and validation strategy across programs.
- Lead complex safety analyses, manage supplier and assessor reviews, and resolve cross-domain safety conflicts.
- Mentor engineers, establish reusable methods and AI-assisted workflows, and own the safety case through Start of Production.
What they ask for
- Degree in Electrical/Electronic, Mechatronics, or a similar engineering discipline.
- 10+ years in the automotive industry (or equivalent) as a systems and/or functional safety engineer, including demonstrated IC-level safety concept development.
- Hands-on ISO 26262 expertise (Parts 3, 4, 6, 9) applied at an OEM or Tier 1, with production experience.
- Experience in vehicle dynamics, propulsion, and chassis systems; strong V&V grounding including fault injection, HIL, DVP&R, requirements coverage analysis, and CAN/LIN/Ethernet/FlexRay.
Nice to have
- Experience leveraging AI-assisted tools to accelerate safety analysis while maintaining ISO 26262 rigor and review discipline.
Pay
$171.1K – $235.3K USD base salary; annual bonus target of 15% (total pay component)
Tools
ISO 26262, HIL, DVP&R, CAN, LIN, Ethernet, FlexRay, AI-assisted tools
AI focus
Drive adoption of AI-assisted workflows and tools to accelerate safety analysis while maintaining ISO 26262 rigor and review discipline.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative