Staff Systems Engineer

About Kodama

Kodama builds technology to teleoperate and autonomously control heavy equipment in complex, unstructured environments. Today, our systems operate forestry machines in commercial production for paying customers, and we are building the autonomy stack to enable those machines to perform increasingly complex work independently.

The Role

We are looking for a Staff Systems Engineer to own system-level architecture and safety engineering of Kodama’s teleoperated and autonomous platform, from individual machines to multi-machine fleets. You will define system behavior across hardware, software, networking, controls, autonomy, human operators, and field operations to strengthen our requirements, safety analyses, and verification as the platform evolves. This includes owning how the platform detects, manages, and recovers from faults and degraded conditions, and translating requirements and analyses into concrete engineering work that the team can execute.

This is a hands-on, senior individual contributor role.

What You’ll Do

• Define system-level functional, performance, and fault behavior requirements, and develop subsystem requirements in partnership with hardware and software engineers.
• Own system analysis, including hazard analyses, FMEAs, and fault trees, and define how the platform, operators, and operating procedures respond to failures or degraded behavior across operating environments.
• Lead the next-generation architecture, trade studies, and requirements for safety-critical control systems, including safety controllers, E-stops, and human-to-machine and machine-to-machine interaction.
• Translate system and safety requirements into actionable engineering work, verification strategies, and evidence that new capabilities are ready for field deployment.
• Ensure Kodama’s architecture and engineering practices appropriately apply relevant safety standards, including BS EN 17067:2018, BS EN 62745:2017, and ISO 17757:2019.
• Serve as a technical resource to customers, OEM partners, and other external stakeholders on system architecture and safety design.

What We’re Looking For

• BS or advanced degree in electrical, mechanical, systems, or a related engineering field, or 10+ years of systems engineering or equivalent practical experience.
• Significant experience designing or integrating complex, safety-critical electromechanical or distributed systems, with the ability to reason across hardware, software, networking, controls, and physical-machine behavior.
• Experience writing clear, testable system requirements and interfaces, and applying system or functional safety methods through design, integration, and verification.
• Experience with multi-machine systems, such as fleet management, one operator controlling multiple machines, or networking that scales across machines and sites.
• Experience right-sizing systems engineering and safety processes for a fast-moving team, and communicating technical tradeoffs clearly to engineers, customers, and partners.
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-disciplinary technical decisions through influence and judgment, and willingness to get hands-on with debugging, data, and machine testing when needed.

Especially Relevant Experience

We don’t expect candidates to have all of the following, but experience in several would be particularly valuable:

• Autonomous vehicles, mobile robotics, heavy equipment, defense, or other safety-critical cyber-physical systems
• Functional safety standards such as ISO 17757, ISO 13849, IEC 61508, IEC 62061, ISO 26262, or related frameworks
• Safety certification or third-party assessment with organizations such as TÜV or UL, or participation in standards committees
• Teleoperation, distributed robotics, or real-time networking and communications
• Embedded systems, safety controllers, PLCs, CAN/J1939, hardware-in-the-loop testing, or fault injection
• Robotics perception, localization, planning, control, or autonomy safety
• Validation of machine learning-based components for field deployment
• Proficiency in system modeling tools (Python or equivalent software language)
• Human factors, operator interface design, or human-machine interaction
• Off-road or unstructured operating environments, such as forestry, mining, construction, or agriculture

Location & Travel

This role can be remote within the United States. We expect approximately 10–20% travel to customer sites, with more concentrated travel during the first few months to develop a firsthand understanding of our machines, customers, and operating environments.