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Dexterity is an enterprise Physical AI company building intelligent robots for complex industrial work. The company's Mech systems combine the Foresight World Model, robotics, and a Physical AI platform to perform demanding logistics workflows—including trailer loading, trailer unloading, and airport baggage handling—at industrial scale and reliability.
You will lead functional safety engineering for industrial robots, autonomous mobile systems, and motion-control and drivetrain architectures. You own the full safety lifecycle—from hazard and risk analysis through requirements, architecture, implementation, verification, and validation—to support compliant deployment in North American, European, and Japanese markets.
Key responsibilities include:
- Create and maintain a Functional Safety Management Plan, defining lifecycle, responsibilities, work products, competence requirements, and approval authority.
- Develop and maintain Quality Management System (QMS) integration, ensuring safety activities, reviews, approvals, deviations, corrective actions, and audits align with existing quality processes.
- Perform machinery risk assessments per ISO 12100; identify hazards, define safe states and safety functions, and determine required Performance Level (PLr) or Safety Integrity Level (SIL).
- Support compliance and certification activities with certification bodies, test laboratories, and external assessors (UL, TÜV, NRTLs, notified bodies).
- Interpret relevant regulations and standards; advise engineering teams on practical application and maintain awareness of evolving robotics-safety expectations.
- Develop and review safety architectures for E-stop, protective stop, Safe Torque Off (STO), safe stopping, safely limited speed, overspeed protection, brake control, restart prevention, and protective sensing.
- Apply ISO 13849-1/-2 and IEC 62061, including redundancy, diagnostics, MTTFd/PFH calculations, common-cause failure analysis, and validation.
- Analyze robotic and drivetrain failure modes: motor and inverter faults, welded switching devices, encoder or feedback loss, brake, steering, and gearbox failures, unintended torque, overspeed, and loss of control.
- Define safety interfaces among safety PLCs, robot controllers, servo drives, inverters, motors, brakes, encoders, scanners, contactors, and safety I/O; specify safe behavior for communication loss or invalid data.
- Apply safety-rated communication protocols (PROFIsafe, CIP Safety, EtherCAT/FSoE) with working knowledge of PROFINET, EtherNet/IP, and other industrial networks.
- Perform HARA, FMEA/FMECA/FMEDA/DFMEA, fault tree analysis (FTA), fault injection testing, and safety-case analyses; translate results into traceable safety requirements and design evidence.
- Perform mechanical and structural analysis for components whose failure can create or worsen hazards, linked to inspection and proof-test needs.
- Plan and execute verification and validation activities covering stopping performance, response time, sensor and encoder faults, drive faults, communication loss, restart behavior, and achievement of defined safe states.
- Support safety-related PLC and embedded implementation, component selection, IEC 61131-3 programming, customer-site standard operating procedures, and scalable safety training.
- Engage in customer-facing technical meetings to clarify safety design decisions, explain FuSa compliance, and provide expert guidance on system guardrails.
You will work with standards including ISO 12100, ISO 13849-1/-2, IEC 61508, IEC 62061, IEC 60204-1/NFPA 79, ISO 10218-1/-2, ANSI/RIA R15.06, ANSI/RIA R15.08, ISO 3691-4, IEC 61496, UL 1740, UL 3100, EU Machinery Regulation, and EMC requirements.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical, Mechanical, or related engineering discipline.
- 10+ years of functional safety experience in robotics, autonomous systems, industrial automation, automotive, aerospace, or other safety-critical machinery domains.
- Hands-on experience with servo drives, inverters, motor controls, encoders, brakes, safety PLCs, safety I/O, and safety-rated networks.
- Demonstrated ownership of the complete safety lifecycle: hazard and risk analysis → safety requirements → PLr/SIL determination → architecture → implementation → verification → validation.
- Ability to evaluate manipulator and mobile-platform/drivetrain hazards, including stopping distance, stored energy, braking, unintended motion, and loss of control.
- Experience with Structured Text, Ladder Logic, and/or Function Block Diagram, along with PLCs, microcontrollers, and safety-related embedded systems.
- Functional safety certification such as TÜV Functional Safety Engineer, CFSE, CFSP, or CMSE preferred.
- Must be able to determine how a safety-critical failure is detected, how the system reaches a defined safe state, and how the required PL/SIL is quantitatively justified and demonstrated through analysis, implementation, and validation.
- Strong independent ownership, cross-functional communication, and ability to convey technical safety decisions to engineering leadership and non-technical stakeholders.
- Ability to develop clear compliance documentation, safety procedures, and customer-facing technical guidance.
- Willingness to travel domestically and internationally as required.
