Functional Safety Engineer Jobs in Novi, MI (NOW HIRING)

Job Title: Functional Safety Manager

Location: Southfield, MI 48076

Primary Responsibilities

Functional Safety Management and Governance

• Develop, tailor, maintain, and drive the project functional safety plan, including lifecycle activities, work products, milestones, roles, dependencies, reviews, audits, and assessments.
• Define the Development Interface Agreement or equivalent responsibility model across OEM, Tier-1, semiconductor, software, and engineering-service partners.
• Establish project safety governance, review cadence, decision rights, escalation paths, evidence expectations, and approval gates.
• Monitor functional safety progress, quality, open findings, and delivery risk; provide concise status reporting to program and engineering leadership.
• Coordinate confirmation reviews, functional safety audits, and functional safety assessments with the required level of independence.
• Ensure competence management, resource planning, and role clarity for safety-related activities.
• Govern safety impact analysis for changes, defects, deviations, re-use, carry-over elements, and variant introduction.
• Maintain the safety case strategy and assure that claims, arguments, and evidence remain complete, consistent, and configuration-controlled.

Required Qualifications and Experience

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Systems Engineering, or a related discipline. A master's degree is preferred.
• Typically 10+ years of automotive embedded-system development experience, including substantial functional safety responsibility and at least 3 years in a technical lead, safety manager, or equivalent coordination role.
• Demonstrated working knowledge of ISO 26262:2018, with strong applied depth in Parts 4, 5, and 6 and a good understanding of Parts 2, 3, 8, and 9.
• Experience managing safety activities for ASIL-rated systems and coordinating work products across system, hardware, and software teams.
• Hands-on experience with safety requirements, safety architecture, safety analyses, verification planning, traceability, change impact analysis, and safety-case evidence.
• Experience participating in or preparing for functional safety reviews, audits, or assessments.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex safety matters to engineering teams, suppliers, customers, and leadership.

Essential Technical Competencies

Competency Area

Expected Depth

Illustrative Evidence

ISO 26262 Parts 4, 5, and 6

Expert

Has led or assured system, hardware, and software safety work products across a production program.

Functional Safety Management

Advanced

Owned safety plan, interfaces, governance, milestones, confirmation measures, and escalations.

Safety Requirements and Architecture

Expert

Converted safety concepts into allocated technical, hardware, and software safety requirements and mechanisms.

Safety Analysis

Advanced

Led or reviewed FMEA, FTA, FMEDA, DFA, and ASIL decomposition/independence considerations.

Verification and Validation

Advanced

Defined safety verification strategy, acceptance criteria, traceability, and evidence across integration levels.

Automotive Embedded Systems

Advanced

Understands ECUs, microcontrollers, sensors, actuators, networks, diagnostics, real-time software, and interfaces.

ALM and Configuration Control

Advanced

Uses requirements, test, defect, baseline, and change-management tools to maintain a defensible digital thread.

Leadership and Stakeholder Management

Expert

Drives decisions across organizational and supplier boundaries while maintaining objective safety assurance.

Added Advantage: ADAS and Automated-Driving Domain

Desirable Domain Experience

• Knowledge of ADAS and automated-driving architectures is an added advantage, particularly where functional safety must be coordinated with perception, sensor fusion, localization, planning, control, vehicle networks, and degraded-operation strategies.
• Understanding of camera, radar, lidar, ultrasonic, and vehicle-motion sensor interfaces and common failure modes.
• Familiarity with ADAS domain controllers, centralized compute, sensor fusion, vehicle control, and fail-operational or degraded-operation concepts.
• Awareness of the relationship between ISO 26262 functional safety, ISO 21448 SOTIF, cybersecurity engineering, and AI/ML safety considerations.
• Experience with scenario-based validation, SIL, MIL, HIL, vehicle testing, fault injection, data replay, or large-scale test evidence for ADAS functions.
• Understanding of operational design domain, perception limitations, fallback strategies, driver interaction, and safety monitoring.