Vehicle Safety - Occupant Protection Engineer

Foster City, CAOnsiteFull TimePosted 1 month agoVisa sponsorship available

Is this role right for you?

Upload your resume and get a skill-by-skill breakdown — see exactly where you match, where you're close, and what to highlight. Not a mystery percentage.

Get a tailored resume highlighting what this role needs.

Required skills

occupant protection
vehicle development
crash testing
CAE
virtual testing
physical testing
test results analysis
Jira
FMVSS
Hyperworks

Nice to have

Python
LS-Dyna
DFMEA
SFMEA
Polarion
project management

Role summary

Zoox is seeking an Occupant Protection Engineer to join their Vehicle Safety team. This role focuses on developing occupant protection systems for autonomous vehicles, from conception through crash testing. Responsibilities include translating safety targets into metrics, driving restraint system development, analyzing test results, and correlating CAE with physical tests. The ideal candidate will have 5+ years of experience in automotive development and testing, knowledge of FMVSS regulations, and experience with virtual/physical safety testing and analysis tools like Hyperworks/MetaPost. Experience with 3D design tools (CATIA) and scripting for data analysis is also required.

At Zoox we have set the goal to provide our customers with the highest level of safety while using our fully autonomous vehicles. As a member of the Zoox Vehicle Safety Engineering team you will work with a team of world-class engineers with diverse backgrounds such as robotics, control, and vehicle engineering. You will be responsible for developing occupant protection system performance and you will be involved all the way through the complete vehicle development process from conception to part, system and full vehicle crash testing. You will be working closely with our internal and external safety experts, CAE and module system teams, with our suppliers as well as internal and external test laboratories. Working at Zoox offers you the chance to manifest your technical creativity, utilize your excellent organizational and communication skills and make a big difference in the final product.

In this role, you will:

Own assigned load cases end-to-end: translate vehicle technical specification (VTS) safety targets into testable metrics, and drive restraint system development through the vehicle integration process to meet them

Develop virtual and physical DVPs and track execution against plan

Analyze test results, feedback analysis to engineering teams, and report out at project gateways

Support system-level and full-vehicle test activities, including defining test requests, test matrix, instrumentation and test targets with the support of the validation team

Identify and document performance issues; generate and track Jira tickets to closure

Drive CAE-to-physical test correlation for your load cases

Qualifications

BS or MS in Engineering with passion for electric, autonomous mobility

5+ years of experience within automotive development and testing, preferable safety testing

Sound knowledge of FMVSS regulations and consumer safety protocols

Experience in virtual and physical safety testing, including analysis in Hyperworks/MetaPost

Ability to build and script templates for first-pass data integrity checks, results analysis, and reporting

Strong organizational and communication skills

Experience in 3D design and PLM tools, CATIA 3DX or CATIA V5 preferred

Bonus Qualifications

Project management experience

Experience with Jira

DFMEA and SFMEA knowledge; experience with requirements management tools (Polarion or equiv.)

Knowledge of Python

Experience with LS-Dyna

Ready to apply?

You'll be redirected to Zoox's application page.

Vehicle Safety - Occupant Protection Engineer

Is this role right for you?

Required skills

Nice to have

Role summary

Similar roles

See how RiseMe works