Technical Program Manager, Safety
Bedrock Robotics Inc· startup· Robotics· Oct 23, 2026 · 4d ago
San Francisco, CA
Hybrid
Full-time
Senior
$160K–$220K est.
7+ years exp
Job description
JOIN THE TEAM BRINGING AUTONOMY TO THE BUILT WORLD
At Bedrock, we're moving AI out of the lab and onto real job sites. Our team includes veterans who helped launch Waymo, scaled Segment to a $3.2B acquisition, and grew Uber Freight to $5B in revenue. We retrofit the heavy equipment contractors already own, starting with excavators, so experienced crews can safely take on more projects and deliver them more predictably.
In August 2026, Bedrock-equipped excavators began doing fully autonomous, paid work on live commercial job sites. We've more than doubled our customer base since 2025, and our machines now work with contractors across the West, South, and Midwest.
In October 2026, we raised a $600M Series C co-led by CapitalG and Emergence Capital, bringing our total funding to nearly $1B. We're using it to put more autonomous machines to work, build the field and operations teams behind every deployment, and expand into new machine types and job-site tasks.
This is where algorithms meet steel-toed boots. You'll work alongside construction veterans and world-class engineers to solve physical-world problems that simulations can't touch. If you're ready to do meaningful work on hard problems, we'd love to have you join us.
About the role
This is Bedrock's first dedicated Safety Technical Program Manager, a role built to establish the execution structure that lets us roll out new autonomy capabilities quickly without compromising safety rigor. As we scale to new machine types and expanded operational domains, we are evolving our safety practices toward more explicit, strategic execution.
You will own program execution for the safety, systems engineering, and state estimation work that makes autonomous heavy equipment safe to operate in the real world. This is a hands-on individual contributor role driving alignment and delivery across engineering, safety, autonomy, hardware, and field operations through influence, structure, and clear communication. You will be the connective tissue between safety strategy and technical delivery, making sure requirements are traceable, dependencies are visible, and risks surface early enough to act on. We are a startup that values agility. We believe that speed and safety are compatible when the traceability behind them is solid.
What you'll do
- Own planning and strategic execution for the safety and systems portions of the autonomy roadmap, from requirements through validated field deployment.
- Support safety requirements being traceable, reusable across platforms and sites, and integrated into roadmaps from inception, partnering with safety and systems engineering on hazard analysis, validation evidence, and release readiness.
- Build and maintain the validation plan spanning simulation and on-site testing, ensuring system-level changes are verified before they reach customers.
- Map and actively manage dependencies and tradeoffs across systems, hardware, software, state estimation, and safety, weighing safety impact alongside schedule impact and identifying single points of failure on the critical path before they slip.
- Drive program reviews, risk, and change management for multi-disciplinary, safety-critical initiatives, and provide reporting on roadmap health, delivery status, and safety implications clear enough to support both executive decisions and customer-facing discussions.
- Translate field signals into prioritized engineering work and tracking issues to resolution.
What you'll bring
- 7+ years of technical program management experience, including 2+ years leading programs involving safety-critical or high-integrity systems.
- Domain experience in robotics, autonomous systems, aerospace, or another physical-world safety-critical domain, with a working understanding of the software, firmware, and hardware stacks behind real-world autonomy.
- Working familiarity with a functional safety standard, such as ISO 26262 or IEC 61508, and how it shapes program structure, evidence, and release gates.
- Enough working fluency in statistics and probability to interpret validation results and reliability metrics critically, not just track that they exist.
- Understanding of the rigor, validation, and cross-functional coordination required to operate reliably in the physical world.
- A track record of managing complex, cross-functional programs under ambiguity, taking systems from concept to production.
- The ability to operate at a deep technical level and to distill complex risks and interdependencies into aligned, actionable plans for engineers and executives alike.
- Strong dependency, risk, and change-management instincts in environments where safety and schedule are both non-negotiable.
- A track record of thriving in fast-paced, high-ownership environments, with startup experience strongly preferred and a bias toward building structure that helps us scale through complexity.
- Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent experience.
Bedrock Robotics is an Equal Opportunity Employer
We’re committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace. We consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, ancestry, age, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other protected characteristic.
Reasonable Accommodations
We want our hiring process to be accessible to everyone. If you need an accommodation to participate in the application or interview process, please let your recruiter know so we can support you.
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