---
title: 'Senior Functional Safety Engineer at Bot Auto'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-functional-safety-engineer-bot-auto-houston-c2kr45m4344m'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-04'
---

# Senior Functional Safety Engineer at Bot Auto

- **Company:** Bot Auto
- **Location:** Houston, TX
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-09-03
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-04
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/botauto/jobs/5415976008

## Job description

Company Introduction

At Bot Auto, we are revolutionizing the transportation of goods with our cutting-edge autonomous trucks, enhancing the quality of life for communities around the globe. With the agility of a start-up and the wisdom of seasoned experts, Bot Auto boasts a team that has achieved numerous world-firsts and unparalleled innovations. United by a shared vision, we create miracles and propel the future of transportation. Join us and transform your dreams into reality.

## About the Role

Bot Auto is seeking a Senior Functional Safety Engineer to help define, analyze, validate, and continuously improve the safety of our autonomous trucking platform. In this role, you will work across autonomy, vehicle platform, hardware, software, operations, validation, and fleet teams to ensure our autonomous driving system is designed, tested, and operated with rigorous safety principles.  This role will focus heavily on the functional safety and redundancy designs of our next generation platform working with our hardware and infrastructure software systems team.

You will own and contribute to hazard analysis, safety requirements, safety case development, operational risk assessments, verification and validation evidence, and launch readiness reviews for Level 4 autonomous trucking operations. This is a high-impact role for an engineer who can bridge deep technical analysis with practical deployment needs in real-world freight operations.

## What You’ll Do

- Lead system safety analysis for Bot Auto’s autonomous trucking platform, including autonomy software, vehicle controls, perception, planning, prediction, localization, compute, sensors, communications, fallback behavior, and operational processes
- Develop and maintain safety artifacts such as hazard analyses, functional safety concepts, technical safety requirements, safety cases, risk assessments, fault trees, FMEAs, STPA analyses, ODD assessments, and validation evidence
- Translate hazards and operational risks into clear, testable safety requirements for engineering, validation, operations, and fleet teams
- Partner internally with autonomy, software, hardware, vehicle integration, infrastructure, security, operations, and test teams to ensure safety requirements are implemented and verified
- Implement the Functional Safety Manager type of role for our autonomous vehicle platform working externally with suppliers, the distributed safety development/DIA, and tracking of functional safety case work products across tiered suppliers and integrators
- Support definition and refinement of the Operational Design Domain, including operating routes, environmental constraints, traffic conditions, vehicle behavior boundaries, fallback strategies, and minimum-risk maneuvers
- Evaluate safety impacts of new autonomy features, software releases, hardware changes, sensor configurations, operational procedures, and route expansions
- Drive safety reviews for on-road testing, driverless readiness, commercial operations, incident response, and post-event analysis
- Analyze logs, simulations, test results, disengagements, safety-driver interventions, fleet events, and edge cases to identify safety trends and improvement opportunities
- Define verification and validation strategies for safety-critical requirements across simulation, closed-course testing, structured road testing, shadow mode, and operational deployment
- Work with cross-functional teams to ensure traceability from hazards to requirements, implementation, test coverage, and safety-case evidence
- Contribute to safety governance, launch readiness criteria, change management, release approval processes, and operational safety metrics
- Support regulatory, customer, partner, insurer, and internal safety reviews as needed
- Promote a strong safety culture while enabling fast, disciplined engineering execution

## What We’re Looking For

- Bachelor’s degree in Systems Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Robotics, Computer Science, Aerospace Engineering, Automotive Engineering, or a related technical field
- 7+ years of experience in systems safety, functional safety, autonomous vehicles, robotics, aerospace, automotive, heavy vehicles, safety-critical software, or complex cyber-physical systems
- Strong experience performing safety analyses such as HARA, FMEA, FTA, STPA, failure mode analysis, requirements decomposition, and risk assessment
- Experience developing or contributing to safety cases for safety-critical systems
- Strong understanding of autonomous vehicle system architecture, including perception, prediction, planning, control, localization, mapping, vehicle actuation, compute, sensing, and fleet operations
- Understanding of highly redundant, fault tolerant architectures and fail operational ADS and vehicle health management
- Familiarity with safety standards and frameworks such as ISO 26262, ISO 21448/SOTIF, UL 4600 Safety Case, SAE J3016/J3018, MIL-STD-882, IEC 61508, or similar safety-critical system standards
- Demonstrated experience with distributed development of safety systems and coordination of safety work products and safety case at automotive OEM and Tier 1 or similar OEM/integration level across system of systems and key elements
- Familiarity with emerging standards and best practices for road vehicles using physical AI and driven by ADS, such as AVSC Best Practices, SAE standards, and ISO PAS 8800
- Ability to convert ambiguous technical and operational risks into structured engineering requirements and actionable mitigations, arrive as a leader in your field ready to drive our AV safety readiness
- Experience working with verification and validation teams to define evidence needed to support safety claims
- Strong technical communication skills, including the ability to present risk decisions, tradeoffs, and safety arguments to engineering leaders and cross-functional stakeholders
- Comfort working in a fast-moving startup environment where safety rigor, execution speed, and practical deployment constraints must be balanced

## Nice to Have

- Experience with autonomous trucks, commercial vehicles, robotics, AV operations, fleet operations, or on-road testing
- Experience with ISO26262 or similar safety audit and assessment process
- Experience supporting driverless launch readiness, route readiness, ODD expansion, or commercial autonomous vehicle deployment
- Experience analyzing vehicle logs, simulation results, scenario databases, disengagements, incidents, or safety-driver interventions
- Familiarity with trucking operations, FMCSA/DOT regulations, commercial vehicle safety, or heavy-duty vehicle systems
- Experience with requirements management and traceability tools such as JAMA, Polarion, DOORS, Confluence/JIRA, or similar
- Experience with Python, SQL, data analysis, log analysis, or scripting for safety metrics and validation evidence
- Experience with cybersecurity risk assessment, operational safety, incident response, or emergency response planning and automotive standard ISO21434 and UN ECE R155
- Advanced degree in engineering, robotics, safety engineering, or a related discipline

## Key Success Measures

- Safety requirements are clear, testable, traceable, and aligned with system hazards
- Safety analyses are current, technically rigorous, and integrated into engineering and release decisions
- Safety-case evidence supports operational readiness decisions for new features, routes, and deployment milestones
- Cross-functional teams understand key hazards, mitigations, fallback expectations, and validation requirements
- Safety risks are identified early, communicated clearly, and resolved through practical engineering and operational controls
- AV vehicle architectures and risk assessment organized per ISO26262 and relevant safety standards with strong leadership across safety critical suppliers and delivered components and safety analyses

## Who You Are

You are a systems thinker who can understand the full autonomous trucking stack—from sensors and autonomy software to vehicle actuation, operations, and real-world deployment. You are rigorous but pragmatic, comfortable challenging assumptions, and able to partner with fast-moving engineering teams without becoming a bottleneck. You care deeply about safety, but you also understand that safety engineering must produce actionable decisions, not just documentation. You can explain–even teach–complex topics in autonomy safety with clarity and to build support across multiple stakeholders and partners.

## About Bot Auto

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Bot Auto is a Houston, Texas-based autonomous trucking company developing Level 4 (L4) self-driving technology to operate a fleet of autonomous trucks and offer Transportation as a Service (TaaS) to major shippers and 3PLs.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed Stage)
- **Headquarters**: Houston, Texas, United States
- **Founded**: 2023
- **Founders**: Dr. Xiaodi Hou (CEO)

## Core Business
- **Primary Industry**: Freight and Package Transportation / Autonomous Trucking
- **Target Customers**: B2B — Enterprise shippers and third-party logistics providers (3PLs) seeking dedicated autonomous trucking capacity.
- **Mission Statement**: To make a lasting positive impact on humanity by revolutionizing the transportation industry with autonomous trucks, reducing environmental impact, and improving the quality of life for communities worldwide. [bot.auto](https://bot.auto/about)

## Products & Services
- **Autonomous Trucking Fleet (TaaS)**: Bot Auto operates a fleet of L4 autonomous trucks on Texas roads, providing a "Transportation as a Service" model. They target real shippers who need goods moved immediately, as well as transportation brokers looking for a dedicated carrier partner. [bot.auto](https://bot.auto/)
- **Cost Per Mile (CPM) Framework**: A publicly available benchmarking standard developed in partnership with Boston Consulting Group to measure operational efficiency for autonomous trucking companies, helping stakeholders make data-driven decisions. [bot.auto](https://bot.auto/)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available.
- **Key Metric — Total Funding**: **$20.0M** in a single Seed round closed on September 26, 2024, backed by 9 investors. [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/bot-auto)
- **Notable Customers**: J.B. Hunt, Ryan Transportation, Steves & Sons. [bot.auto](https://bot.auto/)
- **Growth Signals**: Employs 68 people with a 39.3% year-over-year headcount increase (+24 people); active job postings are up 60% year-over-year; the company has successfully deployed self-driving vehicles in Texas. [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/bot-auto)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Leadership & Talent**: Founded by Dr. Xiaodi Hou, a recognized industry leader in autonomy. The engineering team is heavily staffed from top talent pools, including 23 former employees of TuSimple, along with engineers from NVIDIA, Waymo, Lucid Motors, and Motional. [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/bot-auto)
- **Safety-First Foundation**: The company explicitly states "Safety isn't a feature — It's our foundation," positioning safety and operational rigor as the core differentiator. [bot.auto](https://bot.auto/)
- **Operational Focus**: Bot Auto employs a pure TaaS model with real shippers, proving commercial viability today rather than waiting for hypothetical future demand. Their CPM Framework provides transparency into the economics of autonomous trucking.
- **Customer Backing**: Already hauling freight for major names like J.B. Hunt, indicating trust and validation from established industry players.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scaling Commercial Operations**: Expanding fleet operations and autonomous capacity for shippers and 3PLs.
- **Technology Execution**: Continuing to deploy and refine L4 autonomous driving technology, with all development and engineering centered in Houston, Texas.
- **Talent Acquisition**: Aggressively hiring across engineering (software, machine learning, autonomy), operations (fleet maintenance, dispatch), and business functions (internships for MBA/Business roles). [Greenhouse](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/botauto)

## Why Work Here
- **Real Impact**: Bot Auto's autonomous trucks are actively operating on Texas roads today, offering engineers the chance to work on deployed technology that is "actually driving today." [bot.auto](https://bot.auto/career)
- **Culture of Excellence**: The team is described as "the best of the best" — industry leaders who know how to execute AI transformation, with a supportive environment encouraging continuous learning. [bot.auto](https://bot.auto/career)
- **Work Arrangement**: Multiple roles are listed as "Houston, TX preferred, open to remote," offering flexibility. The company is headquartered in Houston (15310 Park Row Blvd) with a presence in the San Francisco Bay Area and Canada. [Greenhouse](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/botauto)
- **Growth Trajectory**: With 39% annual headcount growth, a 60% increase in job postings, and a mission-driven focus on transforming transportation, the company offers significant career development opportunities.
- **Notable Perks**: The team benefits from hands-on work with cutting-edge computing, direct impact on product commercialization, and a mission with concrete economic and societal benefits.

## Sources
1. [bot.auto](https://bot.auto/)
2. [bot.auto/about](https://bot.auto/about)
3. [bot.auto/career](https://bot.auto/career)
4. [Greenhouse - Bot Auto Jobs](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/botauto)
5. [LinkedIn - Bot Auto Company Page](https://www.linkedin.com/company/bot-auto)

## Other roles at Bot Auto

- [Inventory & Procurement Coordinator](https://feeny.ai/job/inventory-procurement-coordinator-bot-auto-brookshire-qawv91acfpp9) — Brookshire, TX
- [Technical Recruiter](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-recruiter-bot-auto-san-francisco-tgnran4yktqy) — San Francisco, CA
- [GPU Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/gpu-engineer-bot-auto-houston-56xpxvrhb6c9) — Houston, TX / San Francisco Bay Area
- [Local Driver CDL](https://feeny.ai/job/local-driver-cdl-bot-auto-dallas-de11dvtb9tkt) — Dallas, TX
- [Local Driver CDL](https://feeny.ai/job/local-driver-cdl-bot-auto-hutchins-3j1bnq2ged43) — Hutchins, TX
- [Senior Software Engineer, Developer Platform](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-developer-platform-bot-auto-houston-cz7pradks1n4) — Houston, TX / San Francisco Bay Area
- [Senior Algorithm Engineer, Deep Learning & Vision](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-algorithm-engineer-deep-learning-vision-bot-auto-houston-1r5932qxg9x8) — Houston, TX / San Francisco Bay Area
- [Algorithm Engineer, Deep Learning & Vision (New Grad)](https://feeny.ai/job/algorithm-engineer-deep-learning-vision-new-grad-bot-auto-houston-1wwtj3281y4a) — Houston, TX / San Francisco Bay Area
- [Algorithm Engineer, Autonomy Planning & Prediction](https://feeny.ai/job/algorithm-engineer-autonomy-planning-prediction-bot-auto-houston-qt5gkcyz1nb3) — Houston, TX / San Francisco Bay Area
- [Software Engineer, Autonomous Driving Platforms](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-autonomous-driving-platforms-bot-auto-houston-0khgp25jsvaz) — Houston, TX / San Francisco Bay Area