Senior Technical Project Manager — Safety Case (Vehicle / Hardware)

We are searching for a Senior Technical Project Manager to drive Aurora's Vehicle/Hardware safety case to completion. Reporting into the Safety Case & Quality Management team, you will own the program management of the Vehicle/Hardware portion of Aurora's safety case end to end - planning the work, coordinating the engineers who own claims and produce hardware evidence, tracking progress and risk, and driving each claim through to closure in support of release decisions. You will be the connective tissue between Hardware Engineering, Vehicle Platform teams, Systems/Safety Engineering, and the Safety Org, ensuring the safety case stays on schedule, sufficient, and audit-ready. Your work directly substantiates that the Aurora-equipped vehicle is acceptably safe to operate on public roads.

You will turn the enterprise Safety Case Lifecycle Process into executed reality for the Vehicle/Hardware module: scoping impacted claims at each milestone, establishing Definitions of Done and timelines, orchestrating hardware evidence development and release, assessing sufficiency against Aurora's Maturity Rubric, managing unsatisfied claims as accepted risks, and keeping evidence fresh across milestone and non-milestone releases. You will maintain the live picture of safety case health and progress, and your reporting will feed the Safety Review Board's Go/No-Go decisions for releases . This is a hands-on technical program role - equal parts project management, hardware safety-case engineering judgment, and cross-functional leadership.

In this role, you will

• Own the program management of the Vehicle/Hardware safety case end to end - planning, scoping, scheduling, and driving claims to closure across releases.
• Scope claims impacted by each milestone and platform change, set Definitions of Done and timelines, and coordinate the engineers who produce the hardware evidence.
• Drive evidence to sufficiency - released, version-controlled, and assessed - and progress each claim through the safety case workflow to closure while preserving independence.
• Manage safety risk for unsatisfied claims through accepted RISK tickets, and keep the live picture of safety case health, progress, and evidence freshness.
• Compile hardware inputs to release closure reports, support SRB Go/No-Go decisions, and drive continuous improvement of Definitions of Done and the Framework.
• Support internal and external safety case audits and assessments, and mentor claim and evidence owners on the process and tooling.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or equivalent applicable technical experience.
• 5+ years of experience in technical program/project management, hardware/systems engineering, functional safety, or safety case / assurance-case development, including leading cross-functional technical programs to schedule.
• Demonstrated experience in a safety-critical hardware domain (e.g. automotive, aerospace, industrial, medical devices).
• Proven program-management skills: planning, tracking, risk and dependency management, and driving deliverables to closure across multiple contributing teams.
• Working knowledge of safety/assurance case methods (claims–arguments–evidence or GSN) and of ISO 26262 (especially Part 5, hardware development, and the hardware metrics in Part 5/Annexes), with familiarity in ASPICE.
• Familiarity with hardware safety evidence - hardware architecture and design, FMEA/FMEDA, diagnostic coverage, FIT-rate / PMHF and reliability analyses, component and HW verification/qualification artifacts - under document and configuration control, with the technical depth to judge sufficiency.
• Proficiency with Jira and Confluence for workflow and program tracking, and with requirements/traceability tooling (e.g. Jama); able to build and maintain status dashboards and reports.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder-management skills, with the ability to convey status, risk, and recommendations clearly to engineering teams and senior leadership.
• Ability to work independently, lead a cross-functional program, and influence without direct authority across hardware, vehicle platform, and safety organizations.

Desirable Qualifications 

• Advanced degree in a relevant technical field, and/or a program-management credential (e.g. PMP).
• Familiarity with UL 4600 (autonomous systems safety), and ISO/SAE 21434 (cybersecurity) as complementary standards.
• Hands-on experience with hardware safety analysis tooling (e.g. FMEDA / reliability tools) and with sensor, compute, or actuation hardware in a vehicle context.
• Experience preparing for or supporting external assessments (e.g. TÜV, ISO 26262 hardware assessments) and managing findings to closure.
• Experience with the transition of a safety-critical hardware product from development to commercial deployment, including across multiple vehicle platforms.
• Experience building quality/assurance metrics and dashboards (e.g. AWS QuickSight, S3, Lambda) for evidence-health monitoring.
• Experience developing process and training materials for safety case or QMS adoption.

The base salary range for this position is $150,000-$240,000 per year. Aurora’s pay ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Within the range, the successful candidate’s starting base pay will be determined based on factors including job-related skills, experience, qualifications, relevant education or training, and market conditions. These ranges may be modified in the future. The successful candidate will also be eligible for an annual bonus, equity compensation, and benefits.

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