Staff Systems Engineer

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in California.

📋 Description

• Take ownership of system-level architecture and safety engineering for Kodama’s teleoperated and autonomous platform, encompassing individual machines and multi-machine fleets.

• Establish system behavior across hardware, software, networking, controls, autonomy, human operators, and field operations.

• Enhance requirements, safety analyses, and verification as the platform progresses.

• Manage how the platform detects, handles, and recovers from faults and degraded conditions.

• Convert requirements and analyses into actionable engineering tasks.

• Define system-level functional, performance, and fault behavior requirements.

• Collaborate with hardware and software engineers to develop subsystem requirements.

• Conduct hazard analyses, FMEAs, and fault tree analyses.

• Specify responses from the platform, operator, and operating procedures to failures or degraded behavior.

• Lead efforts in next-generation architecture, trade studies, and requirements for safety-critical control systems.

• Address safety controllers, emergency stops, and interactions between human-to-machine and machine-to-machine.

• Transform system and safety requirements into practical engineering tasks, verification strategies, and deployment evidence.

• Implement relevant safety standards, including BS EN 17067:2018, BS EN 62745:2017, and ISO 17757:2019.

• Act as a technical resource for customers, OEM partners, and external stakeholders regarding system architecture and safety design.

• Travel to customer sites to gain firsthand insights into machines, customers, and operating environments.

⛳️ Requirements

• Bachelor’s or advanced degree in electrical, mechanical, systems, or a related engineering discipline, or 10+ years of systems engineering or equivalent practical experience.

• Extensive experience in designing or integrating complex, safety-critical electromechanical or distributed systems.

• Proficient in reasoning across hardware, software, networking, controls, and physical-machine behavior.

• Experience in writing clear, testable system requirements and interfaces.

• Familiarity with applying system or functional safety methods throughout design, integration, and verification processes.

• Background in multi-machine systems, such as fleet management, where one operator controls multiple machines, or networking that scales across machines and locations.

• Experience in tailoring systems engineering and safety processes for a dynamic team environment.

• Capable of clearly communicating technical trade-offs to engineers, customers, and partners.

• Proven ability to lead cross-disciplinary technical decisions through influence and sound judgment.

• Willingness to engage hands-on with debugging, data analysis, and machine testing as needed.

• Experience in several particularly relevant areas may be advantageous, including autonomous vehicles, mobile robotics, heavy equipment, defense, safety-critical cyber-physical systems, functional safety standards, safety certification, teleoperation, distributed robotics, real-time networking, embedded systems, safety controllers, PLCs, CAN/J1939, hardware-in-the-loop testing, fault injection, robotics perception, localization, planning, control, autonomy safety, machine-learning validation, Python or equivalent, human factors, operator interface design, human-machine interaction, and off-road or unstructured operating environments.

🏝️ Benefits

• Approximately 10–20% travel to customer sites.

• Remote work opportunities within the United States.