Senior Safety Research Engineer, Human Factors Modeling

As a safety research engineer focused on human factors modeling, you will help Zoox to continuously update and evolve our understanding of safety-critical road user behavior, and contribute to the overall safety risk assessment that will inform decision-making in every aspect of the technology development. You will be part of the SDMA Safety Research team which is scoped with enhancing the foundational approaches used in the safety case. The research you do could potentially lead to methodologies which can inform critical design aspects of the Zoox robotaxi.

In this role, you will:

• Lead statistical analysis of various safety-critical human road user behaviors to inform the evaluation of Zoox autonomous driving performances. This can be based on third party naturalistic driving data or academic publications.
• Lead research and experimental design for utilizing in-house data to inform safety-critical human road user behavior in the context of autonomous vehicles.
• Propose and standardize processes to guide and execute the development of simulation human road user kinematic and non-kinematic parameters.
• Maintain and grow a knowledge base of human road user behavior across modes, including: passenger vehicle drivers, emergency vehicle drivers, bicycle riders, pedestrians, and more.
• Contribute to the development and evolution of the Safety Case of Zoox technology, in close collaboration with cross-functional teams including Systems Engineers, Software and Hardware Engineering, Vehicle Engineering, Safety Strategy, Legal, etc.

Qualifications

• Ph.D. degree in an Engineering or Science discipline with a strong Human Factors focus and statistics skills
• Proficiency in experimental design and multivariate statistical methodologies, e.g., causal inference with observable data, classification, dimension reduction, and other quantitative analysis/modeling tools
• At least 3 years of relevant experience in modeling and analyzing the behavior of human road users based on naturalistic databases
• Collaborative team player with strong written and in-person communication skills

Bonus Qualifications

• Have the ability to use Python to interface with Zoox internal driving and simulation data sources
• At least 5 years of relevant work experience related to human factors in safety-critical systems and, naturalistic driving data analysis
• Publications in the field of Human Factors related to safety, traffic safety research, and Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS)