Head of Validation and Systems Engineering

About the role

Join the team bringing advanced autonomy to the built world at Bedrock. We're moving AI out of the lab and into the real world, deploying autonomous systems on heavy construction equipment across the country to improve safety and accelerate critical infrastructure projects. As Head of Validation and Systems Engineering, you will lead validation, verification, and systems engineering as an integrated discipline, defining criteria for unsupervised deployments and serving as the technical authority on readiness.

Our machines already operate unsupervised at customer sites. This role will push the boundaries of safety standards as we introduce more machine types, tackle new tasks, and expand to new sites.

Responsibilities

• Design safety validation metrics, scenario libraries, and architectural coverage to quantify end-to-end behavioral safety as the machine set and task set expand.
• Develop a validation architecture that generalizes, distinguishing platform-independent evidence from what must be re-established per machine, task, or site.
• Own requirements decomposition and traceability from mission-level intent through subsystems, using validation findings to expose gaps, ambiguities, and conflicts.
• Define V&V strategy and infrastructure, selecting the right instruments (log playback, simulation, proving-ground testing, on-site work) and specifying tooling to ensure trustworthiness across a growing fleet.
• Validate sensing, compute, and actuation hardware, including functional-safety readiness of safety-critical paths on new platforms.
• Grow and scale a multidisciplinary team of software, systems, test, hardware engineers, and data scientists ahead of machine deployment.
• Create decision-grade reporting by defining KPIs (verification coverage, defect trends, release readiness) and distilling dense test data into actionable insights for leadership, customers, and insurers.

First Year Goals

• A V&V framework and safety case structure recognized as rigorous by engineering, customers, and insurers, spanning multiple machine types and tasks.
• A scenario and coverage model built for future machines and tasks, not just existing ones.
• Generalizable readiness criteria that accelerate validation for subsequent platforms without lowering the bar.
• A sustainable team that outlives any single launch.

Requirements

• BS or advanced degree in engineering, physics, or a technical field (or equivalent practical experience).
• 10+ years in test planning and experimental design for safety-critical autonomous or robotic systems, with a focus on safety and repeatability.
• Track record building and leading multidisciplinary teams (software, systems, hardware, test, data science).
• Expertise in sensing and compute: cameras, lidar, radar, GNSS, IMUs, edge compute, embedded controllers.
• Fluency in data analysis and test automation (Python, C/C++) to interrogate results directly.
• Experience managing parallel test activities across distributed teams, sites, and stakeholders.
• Judgment to distinguish proven claims from those that merely appear proven.

Ways to stand out

• Experience taking a driverless or unsupervised system through real deployment and holding the readiness gate, especially across multiple platforms.
• Scaled a validation program across a heterogeneous fleet, multiple sites, or successive hardware generations.
• Authored or led a formal safety case or contributed to safety standards (UL 4600, ISO 26262, ISO 21448, or off-road equivalents).
• Functional safety experience on vertically integrated or custom hardware.
• Familiarity with heavy construction machines (excavators, articulated dump trucks, dozers, wheel loaders, motor graders).
• Record of external technical contributions: publications, keynotes, standards bodies, or research leadership.

How we work

We are a startup with an appetite for agility, balancing speed with uncompromising safety. Roles are often flexible—if you don’t fit all criteria or are in another location (especially where we have offices like SF or NY), we encourage you to apply.