Director, System Safety

May Mobility is transforming cities through autonomous technology to create a safer, greener, more accessible world. Based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, May develops and deploys autonomous vehicles (AVs) powered by our innovative Multi-Policy Decision Making (MPDM) technology that literally reimagines the way AVs think. Our vehicles do more than just drive themselves - they provide value to communities, bridge public transit gaps and move people where they need to go safely, easily and with a lot more fun. We’re building the world’s best autonomy system to reimagine transit by minimizing congestion, expanding access and encouraging better land use in order to foster more green, vibrant and livable spaces. Since our founding in 2017, we’ve given more than 500,000 autonomous rides to real people around the globe. And we’re just getting started. We’re hiring people who share our passion for building the future, today, solving real-world problems and seeing the impact of their work. Join us. Job Summary The Director, System Safety leads May Mobility's day-to-day product safety function — driving the L4 safety case, the Driver-Out (DO) gated deployment plan with strategic ride-hail partners, and the Safety Management System (SMS) build-out. Reporting to the VP, Safety & Validation, the role manages a multi-disciplinary team across systems and programs, test execution, and safety risk and process. The Director partners with the VP on external regulatory and partner relationships and is the primary internal owner of the safety roadmap. This role inherits a mature roadmap and bench, and will execute the next 18 months of L4 commercial expansion across the US and Japan. Essential Responsibilities Lead a multi-disciplinary team across systems, test execution, and safety risk and process/SMS Drive the Driver-Out (DO) gated deployment plan with strategic ride-hail partners (Lyft, Uber) — internal gating, partner safety onsites, and recommendation packages for go/no-go decisions  Own the Safety Case Framework for May's L4 systems, including HARA, FTA, FMEA, and runtime-monitor coverage for the MPDM-based decision-making stack, with ML-aware safety analysis  Build out and operationalize the Safety Management System (SMS): incident risk assessment process, risk register automation, recall response plan, safety gating test suite, and the Product Safety Competency Register. Define safety architecture — partner with Autonomy, Validation, and Hardware to ensure safety-by-construction across future releases (scalable runtime monitoring, ODD enforcement, Driver-Anomaly response systems). Execute on May's L4 Japan compliance plan — partner with the Systems & Japan Programs Manager and the Japan Regulatory Safety Engineer on partner engagement and bilingual regulator response cadences. Co-lead strategic partner safety onsites (e.g., Uber Safety Onsite cadence) with the VP, Safety & Validation; own the technical narrative in OEM, ride-hail, and regulator forums. Hire and onboard the open safety roles and develop existing leaders in the org. Skills and Abilities Success in this role typically requires the following competencies: L4 Safety Case Architecture: Owns the safety case end-to-end — including ML-aware analysis (ISO 21448, ISO 8800). Has personally contributed to an L4 safety case, not only reviewed one. AI-Native Safety Mindset : Has built safety arguments for learned components (neural-network planners, transformer-based driving stacks, end-to-end models) where the V-model alone is insufficient. Comfortable defining runtime monitors, distributional-shift mitigations, and uncertainty-quantification strategies that anchor a credible safety case for ML-based decision-making. Data-Driven Safety : Has used vehicle telemetry, simulation results, or operational metrics to change a safety roadmap, gate a release, or escalate a risk. Partners naturally with data science and ML engineers to define safety KPIs and guard-rails grounded in evidence. Driver-Out / Driverless Deployment Execution: Has been a key contributor to the gating, partner-readiness, and regulator steps required to remove the safety driver from a commercial AV deployment. Comfortable owning the technical recommendation behind a go/no-go decision. Partner & Regulator Engagement: Co-leads safety conversations with strategic commercial partners (ride-hail, OEM, transit agency) and regulators alongside an executive sponsor — represents technical depth credibly without losing the audience. People Leadership: Has managed managers or has managed a team of senior ICs and is ready to step up to manager-of-managers. Track record of hiring under ambiguity and onboarding leaders into existing programs. SMS and Safety Process Build-Out: Has contributed to standing up or substantively expanding a Safety Management System — incident investigation, near-miss reporting, risk register operationalization, recall proces