Technical Program Manager, Safety
First dedicated Safety TPM at Bedrock Robotics, a startup deploying autonomous heavy construction equipment like excavators. Day to day: owning program execution for safety, systems engineering, and state estimation — keeping safety requirements traceable, managing cross-functional dependencies and risk, and building validation plans spanning simulation and on-site field testing.
- Compensation
- Not disclosed
- Location
- San Francisco, CA
- Work setup
- Hybrid
- Seniority
- Not specified
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- 2+ years
- Category
- Project management
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- 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 working understanding of software, firmware, and hardware stacks behind real-world
- Working familiarity with a functional safety standard such as ISO 26262 or IEC 61508, and how it shapes program structure, evidence, and release gates
- Working fluency in statistics and probability to critically interpret validation results and reliability metrics
- Understanding of the rigor, validation, and cross-functional coordination required to operate reliably in the physical world
- Track record of managing complex, cross-functional programs under ambiguity, taking systems from concept to production
- Ability to operate at a deep technical level and distill complex risks and interdependencies into actionable plans for engineers and executives
- Strong dependency, risk, and change-management instincts in environments where safety and schedule are both non-negotiable
- Track record of thriving in fast-paced, high-ownership environments, with a bias toward building scalable structure
- Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent experience
Nice to have
- Startup experience
Full 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 more of the critical infrastructure our society needs.
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 South, Midwest, and Mid-Atlantic
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.