Senior Electronics Engineer – Functional Safety

Team: Hardware

Location: Zürich

Commitment: Full-Time

Workplace Type: onsite

Job Description

As a Senior Electronics Engineer – Functional Safety, you will own the hardware-level Functional Safety design for our robots’ custom electronics. You will design fault-tolerant circuits at the schematic and PCB level — implementing redundant architectures, hardware diagnostics, and safe-state mechanisms — and perform the quantitative reliability analysis to substantiate that your designs meet the required Safety Integrity Level. This is a hands-on circuit design role, not a systems-level safety concept or process management position.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Design fault-tolerant circuits for safety-critical subsystems, selecting appropriate safety architectures (e.g., 1oo2, 1oo2D) based on the required SIL target.
• Implement hardware diagnostic and monitoring mechanisms to detect dangerous failures.
• Design circuits that enforce a defined safe state when a fault is detected.
• Apply Common-Cause Failure mitigation techniques at the component and PCB level.
• Perform FMEDA on your own schematics — identifying failure modes per component and calculating Safe Failure Fraction (SFF) and Diagnostic Coverage (DC).
• Build Reliability Block Diagrams and compute SIL metrics to verify your designs meet the target.
• Select and derate components based on failure rate data, mission profiles, and expected lifetime.
• Advise system architects on hardware safety constraints and review PCB layouts for safety compliance.
• Collaborate with electronics, firmware, and systems engineering teams to integrate safety functions into the overall robot design.
• Create and maintain Functional Safety documentation for your hardware modules.

What You Must Have

• Master’s degree or higher in Electrical Engineering, Electronics, or a closely related field.
• 5+ years designing electronics hardware for Functional Safety–certified products.
• Proven work under IEC 61508 (preferred), ISO 13849, or ISO 26262.
• Delivered PCB-level hardware that achieved SIL 2 or SIL 3 (or equivalent PL d/e, ASIL B–D) certification.
• Background in analog, power, and/or mixed-signal circuit design.
• Hands-on experience implementing safety architectures in schematics — not just block diagrams.
• Ability to perform FMEDA and SIL metrics calculations on your own designs.
• Understanding of failure rate data sources and component derating for reliability.
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to debug fault-tolerant hardware.
• Comfortable working cross-functionally with firmware, mechanical, and systems teams.

Get Some Bonus Points

• Experience with safety-rated ICs (safe supply supervisors, safety MCUs, smart drivers with diagnostic feedback).
• Has contributed to or authored a Safety Manual for a hardware module.
• Familiar with Proven-in-Use argumentation for off-the-shelf components.
• PCB layout skills relevant to safety (creepage/clearance, redundant channel routing).
• Experience with circuit simulation (SPICE) to verify fault response behaviour.
• Experience in robotics, automotive, aerospace, or medical device sectors.
• PhD degree in a relevant engineering discipline.