Principal Hardware Functional Safety Expert

Location: US, CA, Santa Clara, US, TX, Austin

Time Type: Full time

Job Description

NVIDIA has continuously reinvented itself over two decades. Our invention of the GPU in 1999 sparked the growth of the PC gaming market, redefined modern computer graphics, and revolutionized parallel computing. More recently, GPU deep learning ignited modern AI — the next era of computing. NVIDIA is a “learning machine” that constantly evolves by adapting to new challenges that are hard to tackle, that only we can pursue, and that matter to the world. This is our life’s work, to amplify human creativity and intelligence.

Are you a HW Safety Expert looking for an exciting opportunity to contribute to the development of safety systems in autonomous driving? Join our team and work with industry leaders in machine learning, computer vision, and robotics to design innovative AI computing products for self-driving cars.

What you’ll be doing:

You will be working closely with internal design and architecture teams to ensure state of the art semiconductor safety development. Specific responsibilities of the HW Safety Expert role include:

• Owning the development and implementation of functional safety standards (e.g., ISO 26262, IEC 61508 and ISO 21448) across various projects.

• Leading and maintaining group critical decisions, methodologies, and technical goals.

• Driving decisions for pragmatic IEC 61508 and ISO 26262 conformant cross-organizational solutions, while promoting the safety culture and aligning safety methods and tools to the needs of the safety engineering and architect teams.

• Acting as the primary contact for all functional safety-related concerns and passionately working to resolve identified issues.

• Resolve critical challenges by collaborating with subject-matter experts

• Representing NVIDIA within relevant communities (standardization, universities, customers, partners)

What we need to see:

To be successful in this role, you should have:

• Bachelors degree in engineering or equivalent experience.

• 15+ years of experience in safety development for automotive safety-related semiconductors.

• Strong understanding of HW development according to ISO 26262 and IEC 61508

• Expertise in requirements management and familiarity with common requirements management tools.

• Ability to solve critical problems with high complexity

• Proficient in analyzing data, writing reports, and delivering presentations.

Ways to stand out from the crowd:

While not required, the following will help you stand out:

• Experience in development of fault-tolerant systems for autonomous driving

• Expertise in standardization work. Preferably in ISO 26262, IEC 61508 and ISO 21448

• A consistent track record of achieving safety certifications from third-party assessors such as TUEV SUED, exida, or equivalent.

NVIDIA gives automakers, tier-1 suppliers, automotive research institutions, and start-ups the power and flexibility to develop and deploy breakthrough artificial intelligence (AI) systems for self-driving vehicles. NVIDIA's unified AI computing architecture enables training deep neural networks in the data center on the NVIDIA DGX, and then seamlessly runs them on NVIDIA DRIVE AGX inside the vehicle. This end-to-end approach uses NVIDIA DRAVE AV software and allows cars to receive over-the-air updates to add new features and capabilities throughout the life of a vehicle. We believe that realizing self-driving cars will be a defining contribution of our generation (e.g. traffic accidents are responsible for ~1.25 million deaths per year worldwide). We have the funding and scale, and are looking for high quality, self motivated individuals to grow our team. NVIDIA is widely considered to be one of the technology world’s most desirable employers. We have some of the most forward-thinking and innovative people in the world working for us. Are you creative, autonomous and love a challenge? If so, we want to hear from you so you can be a part of the NVIDIA family!

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Your base salary will be determined based on your location, experience, and the pay of employees in similar positions. The base salary range is 272,000 USD - 431,250 USD.Applications for this job will be accepted at least until February 24, 2026.

This posting is for an existing vacancy. 

NVIDIA uses AI tools in its recruiting processes.

NVIDIA is committed to fostering a diverse work environment and proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As we highly value diversity in our current and future employees, we do not discriminate (including in our hiring and promotion practices) on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law.