SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
Salary: USD 170,000 - 225,000 / annual
Overland AI, founded in 2022 and headquartered in Seattle, is transforming land operations for modern defense through autonomous ground vehicles. The company has secured funding from prominent defense tech investors including 8VC and Point 72, and maintains trusted partnerships with DARPA, the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, and Special Operations Command. Backed by eight-figure DoD contracts, Overland AI is strengthening national security through close iteration with end users engaged in tactical operations.
You will join the Systems, Safety, and Test Engineering (SST) team as a Software Systems Safety Engineer, leading software safety for autonomous ground vehicles. You'll work directly with autonomy software teams building perception, planning, and control systems. Software is critical to vehicle safety—it determines how vehicles see, decide, and move—and your role is to ensure that safety-significant software functions are rigorously analyzed and validated.
Key responsibilities include:
- Identify safety-significant software functions and assign software control categories and criticality per MIL-STD-882E and the Joint Software Systems Safety Engineering Handbook (JSSSEH).
- Plan and execute level-of-rigor tasks: safety analysis of software requirements, architecture, design, and code.
- Analyze autonomy software for hazardous behaviors, including perception errors, degraded sensors, timing and latency, and machine learning components.
- Derive software safety requirements and trace them to design, code, and verification.
- Partner with software engineers on safety-critical design, such as fault detection, fail safes, watchdogs, and safe-stop behavior.
- Define safety-specific software testing across simulation, software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, and field testing, and evaluate the results.
- Assess software changes and releases for safety impact before they reach the field.
- Triage software bugs for safety impact on the system, set their priority, and work with software teams to drive safety-relevant issues to closure.
- Own the software safety content of the safety case and Safety Assessment Report, and represent it in ATEC and customer reviews.
Your work feeds Overland AI's MIL-STD-882E safety programs, ATEC safety releases, and customer certifications.
REQUIREMENTS:
Minimum Qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering, computer engineering, or a related discipline.
- Track record of independently performing software safety analysis under MIL-STD-882E/JSSSEH or an equivalent framework (e.g., DO-178C, ISO 26262 Part 6, IEC 61508-3).
- Ability to read C++ or Python and software architecture well enough to analyze design and code for safety.
- Experience managing requirements (Jama, Doors, Polarion) and issue tracking (JIRA).
- Experience supporting and guiding teams through Unit Testing, SW Integration Testing, and Embedded SW Testing.
- Sound, independent engineering judgment on risk, and the ability to explain it to software engineers and external reviewers.
Desired Qualifications & Experience:
- Experience with autonomous systems, robotics, or ROS/ROS 2.
- Familiarity with safety of machine learning and autonomy (UL 4600, ISO 21448/SOTIF, ISO/PAS 8800).
- Experience supporting ATEC or other DoD software safety reviews.
- Experience with static analysis, code coverage, or SIL/HIL test tooling.
- Direct experience in the design and development of safety-critical software, autonomous vehicles or advanced ADAS applications.
- Software or Safety Certifications (ASPICE) or equivalent.
