Staff Systems Engineer, Functional Safety

About this role

Agility’s commercially deployed humanoids operate alongside teams in warehouses, manufacturing facilities, and distribution centers—tackling physically demanding and repetitive tasks while enabling workers to focus on higher-value work. With industry-leading safety standards and years of proven deployment data, we're pioneering a new era of automation that enhances human potential.

About the Role

As a Staff Systems Engineer at Agility Robotics, you'll be the technical leader defining and delivering system-level architecture for our humanoid robot platform, with focus in functional safety requirements integration. Working within a high-impact Systems Engineering team, you'll take ownership of complex safety-critical requirements, cross-functional interfaces, and system-level integration—bringing clarity and structure to incredibly complex safety-critical systems.

This role is ideal for a hands-on technical leader with functional safety expertise who thrives in ambiguity, takes initiative without waiting for permission, and has a passion for building real safety-critical systems fast. You'll help shape how Systems Engineering and Functional Safety integration is applied in a fast-moving startup, balancing the rigor of safety standards with the agility and pragmatism needed to ship products.

Key Responsibilities

Robotics Development

• Requirements Management: Define system and subsystem architectures spanning all domains (mechanical, electrical, firmware, and software) with embedded functional safety, and drive trade studies to balance safety, performance, cost, and execution speed.

• V&V Definition : Define, own, and decompose detailed, verifiable requirements in Jama that can be delivered to Integration and Testing teams for Verification and Validation.

• Interface Definition: Lead development and maintenance of Interface Control Documents (ICDs), managing implementation-specific details for hardware and software interfaces, including message structures, pinouts, and bolt patterns.

• Operational Definitions: Define the sequence of operations between major elements and users using narrative Concept of Operations (ConOps), swimlane diagrams, and/or logical flow charts.

• Test Support: Align system requirements with test plans to ensure coverage across the entire safety system. Drive system-level verification of safety requirements through integration testing and track design differences between test setups and the intended design to determine technical risk.

Operational Support and Technical Leadership

• Safety Tracking & Monitoring: Regularly check and confirm that the safety system's performance meets all specified requirements under live operating conditions.

• Change and Modification Management: Ensure that any modification to the system's hardware or software that impacts safety must be strictly validated to maintain safety integrity and prevent the introduction of new risks.

• Failure Analysis and Investigation: Actively participate in safety assessments and root cause investigations, collaborating with non-safe software and hardware development teams to prevent systemic faults.

• Operational Sustainment: Work closely with Commercial and Product teams to ensure that critical safety mechanisms and processes are maintained at customer sites, including emergency stop and human detection.

• Cross-Functional Alignment and Leadership: Facilitate cross-functional decisions when safety requirements conflict with performance, cost, or schedule constraints, and identify technical and safety risks to influence system decisions.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of Systems Engineering experience in safety-critical domains: robotics, aerospace, automotive, medical devices, or similar multidisciplinary hardware/software systems

• 3+ years working on system safety or functional safety projects and use of functional safety standards such as ISO 13849, IEC 61508, ISO 26262, IEC 62061, or similar

• Demonstrated experience leading system-level integration, architecture, and requirement management efforts

• Previous experience in high-growth, fast-paced environments where self-direction and bias for action are essential

• Experience with safety-critical robotics or autonomous systems strongly preferred

Technical Skills & Safety Expertise

• Understanding of safety lifecycle processes, hazard analysis (HARA, HAZOP, FTA, FMEA), safety integrity levels, and safety architecture principles

• Expert-level skills in authoring safety requirements, managing traceability, and defining cross-functional safety interfaces

• Strong familiarity with the V-model approach to safety-critical systems engineering, including how to adapt it for rapid development environments

• Proficiency in using safety analysis tools (e.g., ANSYS medini analyze, PTC Windchill FTA, ItemIS) and requirements management platforms (Jama, DOORS, Polarion).

• Ability to collaborate closely with Test Engineering to develop and execute system-level safety verification and validation…