Safety Engineer

Department: Hardware Engineering

Location: Palo Alto

Employment Type: FullTime

About Mind

Mind Robotics is building Physical AI for real-world industrial deployment, starting with the factory floor. We believe the hardest problems in AI are solved when researchers and engineers are hands-on with the physical world every day - and we're looking for people who are passionate about robotics, value ownership, and are excited to tackle difficult problems. Join us if you want to move beyond digital intelligence and put intelligence into motion.

About the Role

We're looking for a Senior Safety Engineer who can own functional safety end-to-end for our humanoid platform: hazard analysis, architectural decisions, component selection, certification, and the messy real-world testing in between.

Standards like ISO 3691-4, and ISO 10218 tell you what outcomes you must achieve. ISO 25785-1 is currently under development requiring robot dynamic stability control including zero-energy pose protocols, and fall zone markings. They do not tell you how to get there with a bipedal, dynamically balancing, multi-DOF system that doesn't fit cleanly into the assumptions those standards were written under. We need someone who treats that gap as the interesting part of the job — not a blocker.

Responsibilities

• Lead the safety lifecycle for our humanoid platform: hazard analysis, risk assessment, SIL/PL determination, safety requirements specification, and validation.

• Design safety architectures (E-stops, safety-rated monitored stops, power and force limiting, speed and separation monitoring) appropriate to a mobile, dynamically balancing robot.

• Select and justify safety-rated components : controllers, sensors, contactors, and where no off-the-shelf component fits, design or specify alternatives that achieve equivalent safety integrity.

• Drive certification efforts , and own the technical file.

• Partner with mechanical, electrical, controls, and AI teams to bake safety into the design rather than bolt it on.

• Build the test fixtures, procedures, and evidence needed to prove our safety claims.

• Stay ahead of evolving standards (ISO 25785-1, the in-progress humanoid-specific work, etc.) and translate them into engineering decisions..

Qualifications

• 5–10 years of safety engineering experience on industrial robots, collaborative robots, AGVs/AMRs, or comparable machinery.

• Deep working knowledge of ISO 13849, IEC 62061, IEC 61508, and ISO 10218 (or ANSI/RIA R15.06); familiarity with ISO/TS 15066 for collaborative applications.

• Software safety experience (IEC 61508-3) in addition to systems-level work.

• Hands-on experience taking a product through safety certification — not just supporting it, but owning the technical narrative and defending it to assessors.

• Comfort with the full toolkit: FMEA, FTA, HAZOP, STPA, and the judgment to know which to reach for.

• A creative mindset. Standards rarely dictate components; they dictate outcomes. We want someone who can architect a novel solution, justify it against the standard's intent, and convince a notified body it meets the bar.

• Strong communication — you'll be explaining safety tradeoffs to executives, engineers, and external assessors who all need different versions of the same story.