Staff Systems Engineer - Design Assurance

FERNRIDE is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging because we value and celebrate everyone's differences and individuality. We strive to create an open, safe space in which you feel empowered and authentic. FERNRIDE has 50 employees from 10+ countries. Our culture is characterized by the company values and fundamentals:

 #wewinasoneteam #weexecuteanddeliver #weareambitiousinnovators #weareopentochange #weputcustomervaluefirst #respect #professionalism #safety.

The Quantum Systems Land Domain is developing leading-edge autonomous UGV technology for defense — a domain where no blueprint exists. The product strategy starts with a UGV that is useful on today’s battlefields and can be built with current technology, then progressively increases the authority of the autonomy system while reducing the need for human supervision — across ever more complex operating environments, up to fully autonomous operation in proximity to civilians.

As a senior design assurance expert, you will own and shape this discipline from the ground up: establish the safety architecture, build the assurance processes, and drive design integrity across hardware, software, and ML. You will bridge the gap between safety analysis and engineering implementation — working with system safety, product security, engineering teams, and V&V to ensure safety functions are correctly implemented through the technical architecture. As the product matures, you will grow your domain into a team.

What you will work on / How you will leave your footprint

• Establish and maintain the design assurance process, ensuring safety functions are correctly implemented through the technical architecture.
• Conduct hardware safety analysis — FMEA/FMECA, failure rate analysis, diagnostic coverage, component derating, and environmental qualification.
• Conduct software safety analysis — architecture assessment, identification of safety-relevant software components, and definition of software safety requirements.
• Conduct ML element assurance — data governance, model validation, robustness testing, performance monitoring, and uncertainty quantification for safety-relevant ML components.
• Contribute to component selection for safety-critical functions — evaluate against reliability data, failure mode profiles, and supply chain maturity.
• Define safety mechanisms — redundancy, monitoring, plausibility checks, safe-state transitions, and watchdogs.
• Drive fault injection test design — fault models, injection points, expected responses, and coverage targets.
• Contribute to cost-benefit tradeoffs between alternative safety architectures and recommend the most efficient path to required integrity.
• Contribute to technical risk acceptance — assess residual failure probabilities and confirm design meets allocated integrity targets.
• Maintain safety concept documents defining safety architecture, fault models, diagnostic strategy, and safe-state definitions.
• Own and maintain the system requirements baseline — translate safety measures, security controls, and design needs into verifiable requirements with full traceability.
• Manage compliance matrices for design-level regulations (Low Voltage Directive, EMC Directive, Battery Regulation, REACH, RoHS, POPs).
• Maintain environmental compliance documents (LCEP, EDC, ETS), substance register, and project handbook.
• Coordinate with System Safety to receive safety function allocations and integrity targets; provide feasibility and cost-benefit feedback; escalate when targets are infeasible.
• Coordinate with Product Security on shared technical architecture — fail-safe vs. fail-secure behavior, component selection criteria, and unified software development guidelines.
• Translate system requirements into hardware design rules, software coding guidelines, and integration test requirements for engineering teams; participate in design reviews and FMEA workshops.
• Define verification criteria and fault injection test cases on system requirements for V&V; specify coverage targets; review and accept V&V evidence for design-level safety claims.
• Develop and maintain AI-assisted workflows for requirements management, compliance auditing, and traceability verification.
  
  

What you bring to the team

• Hands-on expertise in hardware safety, software safety, and fault-tolerant system design — FMEA/FMECA, diagnostic coverage analysis, safe-state design, and safety mechanism specification — with an engineering mindset and hands-on attitude.
• Experience translating high-level safety functions into verifiable, allocatable system requirements and managing full traceability across the engineering lifecycle.
• Ability to evaluate cost-benefit tradeoffs between alternative safety architectures and present quantitative safety arguments (PFH, PFHd, MTTFd, DCavg, SFF, PL metrics).
• Strong collaboration skills — you bridge the gap between safety analysis and engineering implementation.
• Interest in AI-assisted engineering workflows and willingness to shape how AI tools support requirements management and compliance verification.
• Comfortable working with software development tools — GitHub, VS Code, Bazel, Markdown, CI/CD pipelines — to operate and evolve the AI-assisted methodology.

Nice to have

• Working knowledge of IEC 61508, ISO 13849, ISO 12100, or ISO 26262 and their application to mixed-criticality architectures.
• Working knowledge of relevant EU instruments — Machinery Regulation, Low Voltage Directive, EMC Directive, Battery Regulation, and AI Act (ML element assurance aspects).
• Understanding of environmental qualification and its impact on component selection and reliability claims (AECTP, substance regulations).
• Understanding of electrical safety (HV/LV design, insulation coordination, protective bonding) and EMF exposure assessment.
• Understanding of mechanical safety — structural integrity, stability analysis, guarding, and safe integration of HV installations.
  
  

What we offer @ FERNRIDE

At FERNRIDE, we believe in empowering you to thrive both personally and professionally. Our benefits are thoughtfully designed to support your growth, well-being, and aspirations while fostering a strong sense of work-life harmony. Here’s how we support you:

• Flexible working hours & remote work
• All-day breakfast and unlimited drinks, fruits, and snacks
• Lunch subsidy
• Select one of three options: (1) EUR 40 Spendit card /month (2) Wellpass (3) Mobility card
• Company pension scheme
• Team, department, and company events
• 30 days of vacation
• Up to six weeks of remote work in countries covered under the EHIC (European Health Insurance Card)

Who we are

At FERNRIDE, we believe in a future where robotics unlocks human potential to create a better world. Yet today, humans still perform repetitive, risky tasks to keep our world running. These jobs, essential yet unattractive, should be performed by robots, which still fall short. We are on a mission to change that and transform critical industries through human-centric automation. 

FERNRIDE delivers a comprehensive ground autonomy platform to offer scalable automation solutions across industries. They span from container terminals and yard operations via defence logistics to open-road trucking. By combining AI-powered autonomy with human oversight and modular, vehicle-agnostic hardware, we enable businesses and defence organizations to harness the full potential of automation, driving efficiency and safety.

FERNRIDE was founded in 2019 following 10 years of research at the Technical University of Munich and currently has 50 employees. We are setting the standard for autonomous logistics and advancing Europe’s technological sovereignty by delivering the first-ever fully certified autonomous trucking system in Europe in 2025. 

http://www.fernride.com