Functional Safety Engineer

We are the movers of the world and the makers of the future. We get up every day, roll up our sleeves and build a better world -- together. At Ford, we’re all a part of something bigger than ourselves. Are you ready to change the way the world moves?

Ford’s Electric Vehicles, Digital and Design (EVDD) team is charged with delivering the company’s vision of a fully electric transportation future. EVDD is customer‑obsessed, entrepreneurial, and data‑driven and is dedicated to delivering industry‑leading customer experience for electric vehicle buyers and owners. You’ll join an agile team of doers pioneering our EV future by working collaboratively, staying focused on only what matters, and delivering excellence day in and day out.

Join us to make positive change by helping build a better world where every person is free to move and pursue their dreams.

As a Staff Functional Safety Engineer, you will be responsible for ensuring the safety of complex electronic control features. You will lead the end‑to‑end safety lifecycle from initial concept through production, ensuring full compliance with ISO 26262. This role requires a unique blend of deep hardware‑level analytical rigor, system‑level architectural thinking, and the leadership presence to drive a robust safety culture across cross‑functional engineering teams.

You will be responsible for defining the safety architecture, steering technical design decisions, and ensuring program readiness through rigorous quantitative risk assessment and the implementation of advanced fail‑operational strategies.

• Lead and execute end‑to‑end functional safety analyses, including HARA, FMEA, and FTA, to identify potential hazards and quantitatively assess safety risks across the autonomous system.
• Define and manage the comprehensive set of functional safety requirements and safety concepts that govern system architecture and design choices.
• Lead the development and assessment of full safety cases for ASIL A‑D products, managing the lifecycle from initial concept to production.
• Collaborate with system and hardware design engineers to develop and document hardware‑level functional safety requirements and decompose module‑level requirements into ECU‑level requirements.
• Derive and verify technical safety concepts and hardware metrics, including PMHF (Probability Metric for Hardware Failure), SPFM, and LFM, to meet ISO 26262 Part 5 and Part 11 requirements.
• Oversee and optimize the program safety readiness process and metrics.
• Serve as a core safety expert in cross‑functional design reviews and technical discussions, ensuring safety goals are met effectively throughout the development lifecycle.
• Champion and promote a robust safety culture and the continuous improvement of the safety program across the engineering organization.
• Identify and provide training, coaching, and mentoring to peers and junior engineers to establish technical best practices.