Applied Methods
~JobsRhodaStaff System Safety Engineer

Rhoda

Staff System Safety Engineer

HardwarePalo AltoFull-TimePosted Mar 10, 2026

About the role

At Rhoda AI, we’re building the next generation of generalist intelligent robots. We own the full robotics stack from high-performance hardware and robot systems to the infrastructure and state-of-the-art foundation world models that control our robots. Our robots are designed to be generalists capable of operating in complex, real-world environments and handling long-tail edge cases, made possible by our cutting edge research and end-to-end system design. We've raised over $400M and are investing aggressively in model research, infrastructure, hardware development, and manufacturing scale-up to make generalist robotics a reality.

This is a Staff position reporting directly to the Head of Safety and Certification. We're looking for a technical executor with a bias for action, impeccable rigor, and the ability to drive cross-disciplinary teams. The candidate must demonstrate deep technical credibility and the appetite to grow into a leadership position as the safety organization scales.

What You'll Do

  • Perform Hazard Analysis and Risk Assessment of humanoid robots across specific customer applications

  • Develop Functional Safety Concepts, Functional Safety Requirements, and Technical Safety Requirements

  • Perform system-level analyses to derive requirements related to stopping distances, perception, and timing/spatial/force constraints

  • Derive requirements for fail-safe and fail-operational behaviors, degraded states, and human-robot interactions

  • Develop test cases for verification and validation

  • Define, engineer, deploy, and employ system safety validation equipment at HIL, SIL, and system level

What We're Looking For

  • B.S. in Electrical Engineering

  • Certified Functional Safety Engineer in IEC 61508 or ISO 26262

  • Experience designing safety systems for complex electromechanical products with significant safety aspects

  • Experience in optics, machine vision, and computer vision

  • Evidence of hands-on engineering work — test benches, measurement, and root-cause analysis, not just documentation

  • Hands-on experience in verification and validation of safety requirements using HIL and SIL

Nice to Have (But Not Required)

  • Experience in humanoid robots, automotive, or autonomous mobile robots (AMR)

  • Certified Functional Safety Engineer in Machinery Safety

  • Experience designing and deploying industrial automation and safety systems

  • Certified SOTIF ISO 21448 engineer

  • Experience in automotive ADAS collision avoidance

  • Experience with laser sensors, LiDAR, and time-of-flight cameras

  • Hands-on experience performing FMEDA per IEC 61508 or ISO 26262

  • In-depth understanding of safety-critical architectures for compute, networking, and power distribution

Why This Role

  • Define the safety foundation for a humanoid robot operating in real-world human environments — work that is technically deep, consequential, and genuinely unsolved at this scale

  • Report directly to the Head of Safety and Certification with a clear path to grow into a leadership role as the safety organization scales alongside the company

  • Work at the intersection of functional safety, AI-driven control, and novel electromechanical systems — a combination that doesn't exist anywhere els