System Safety Engineer, Robotics

The Mission

GRAM is a self-replication company creating machine labor for the physical economy.

Our first research frontier is self-preservation: the base case of physical self-replication. We are building a new class of machines called insectoids that can survive, coordinate, and recover without humans. We believe scalable machine labor requires more than single-agent task generality or machines shaped in our image.

About the role

You will own system safety for GRAM's insectoids: identify hazards, define verifiable requirements, challenge designs, and maintain the evidence needed to determine whether a machine or capability is ready for its stated operating envelope.

You will independently set hazard-acceptance criteria and may stop a release, test, or deployment when evidence is absent or residual risk remains unresolved. Success means failures across hardware, software, sensing, communications, and human interaction have traceable controls; safety claims survive fault injection and physical test; and operating boundaries are unambiguous.

What you will do

• Lead system hazard analyses across mechanical, electrical, power, embedded software, controls, autonomy, human interaction, maintenance, transport, and field operation.
• Translate hazards into allocated safety requirements, fault responses, diagnostic coverage, independence constraints, operating limits, verification methods, and acceptance evidence.
• Build and maintain the hazard log, safety requirements traceability, safety case structure, assumptions, open risks, waivers, and release recommendations for each machine configuration.
• Review architectures and changes for single-point failures, common-cause failures, unsafe interactions, loss of control, stored energy, unintended motion, attachment loss, and recovery behavior.
• Define and witness fault-injection, abuse, degraded-mode, emergency-stop, recovery, and human-interaction tests, with results traceable to the relevant safety claim.
• Establish machine, lab, and field safety gates, including stop-work, restart, and authority criteria.
• Investigate incidents and near misses, require containment, verify corrective actions, and ensure lessons change requirements, tests, procedures, or architecture.

Minimum qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in systems, electrical, mechanical, controls, robotics, aerospace, or a related engineering field, or equivalent practical experience in system safety for complex electromechanical systems.
• Led system-safety or functional-safety work for a robot, autonomous vehicle, aircraft, industrial machine, medical device, or comparable electromechanical system with hazardous motion or stored energy.
• Produced and maintained inspectable artifacts such as hazard analyses, safety requirements, fault trees, FMEAs, verification matrices, safety cases, or release risk assessments.
• Converted a cross-disciplinary hazard into hardware, software, control, diagnostic, and procedural mitigations, then verified their behavior through analysis and physical fault testing.
• Exercised independent technical judgment to stop or condition a test, release, or deployment and carried the underlying risk through documented resolution.

Preferred experience

• ISO 12100, ISO 13849, IEC 61508, UL 4600, machinery directives or regulations, collaborative robotics, autonomous systems, or analogous safety frameworks.
• Fault-tolerant motion systems, safety-related controls, human detection, power isolation, work-at-height equipment, or industrial field deployment.
• Working knowledge of C++, Python, embedded systems, controls, electrical schematics, and physical test instrumentation.

Compensation

The annual base salary range for this El Segundo position is $150,000–$190,000. An offer within this range will reflect the position's approved scope and the candidate's demonstrated role-relevant skills and experience.

Working at GRAM

This on-site El Segundo role is hands-on with machines, test fixtures, and field procedures. You must understand the system deeply enough to identify unsafe assumptions, define measurable controls, and decide whether the evidence supports proceeding.

Interview Process

After submitting your application, we review your portfolio and any exceptional work you've shipped. If your application demonstrates the caliber we seek, you'll enter our interview process, which is designed for speed and substance. We aim to complete it within one week from start to finish.

Trust in the Process

GRAM expects deep trust and ownership from its people, and we begin by extending the same to candidates. We treat your information, prior work, and conversations with discretion.