Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Safety & Reliability Engineer

🎯 Role Definition

We are seeking a Safety & Reliability Engineer who will lead cross-functional initiatives to ensure product and operational safety, maximize system reliability and availability, and reduce lifecycle risk. The ideal candidate combines systems thinking, proven reliability engineering techniques, and deep safety assurance experience (e.g., HAZOP, FMEA/FMECA, LOPA, SIL) to design and sustain robust, compliant systems across development, production, and field operations. This role is ideal for engineers experienced in safety standards (IEC 61508, ISO 26262, DO-178/DO-254, MIL-STD, or industry equivalents), reliability modeling, failure investigation, and continuous improvement programs.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Junior Reliability Engineer / Reliability Analyst
Maintenance Engineer or Systems Engineer with reliability focus
Safety Compliance Engineer or Test Engineer with safety analysis experience

Advancement To:

Senior Safety & Reliability Engineer
Reliability Engineering Lead / Principal Reliability Engineer
Safety Manager / Head of Safety & Reliability Programs
Director of Engineering, Safety, or Asset Management

Lateral Moves:

Systems Engineering Lead
Quality Engineering Manager
Asset Performance Management Specialist
Risk Management Consultant

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Lead and execute comprehensive safety analyses (HAZOP, What-If, FMEA, FMECA, Fault Tree Analysis) to identify hazards, assess risk, and recommend design or process mitigations that achieve acceptable residual risk and compliance with applicable standards.
Develop, maintain, and review system-level reliability models using MTBF/MTTR, Weibull analysis, reliability block diagrams, and Monte Carlo simulation to forecast availability, supportability, and lifecycle cost targets.
Define and document Safety Requirements and Functional Safety concepts; translate high-level safety goals into verifiable requirements and testable acceptance criteria for hardware and software systems.
Perform Safety Integrity Level (SIL) or Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL) assessments and allocate verification activities to demonstrate required safety performance across the system lifecycle.
Plan, own, and execute failure investigation and root cause analysis (RCA) for field incidents, production escapes, and in-service failures using 8D, RCA, or A3 methods; drive corrective and preventive actions (CAPA) and closure verification.
Conduct reliability growth testing, accelerated life testing, HALT/HASS and environmental stress screening and synthesize results into actionable design improvements and reliability improvement plans.
Collaborate with design, systems, manufacturing, and quality teams to incorporate reliability and safety inputs into product requirements, DFMEA, design reviews, and production control plans.
Create and maintain Reliability, Availability, Maintainability, and Safety (RAMS) documentation, safety cases, hazard logs, and compliance artifacts for regulatory review and internal audits.
Develop test strategies and verification plans (unit, integration, system-level testing) to validate safety and reliability requirements; coordinate test campaigns and analyze test data to demonstrate conformance.
Establish and monitor reliability metrics (MTBF, MTTF, MTTR, failure rate, availability) and safety KPIs; create dashboards and regular reports to inform leadership and stakeholders.
Drive preventive and predictive maintenance strategy using condition monitoring, CMMS, FMEA outputs, and data-driven analytics to reduce downtime and extend asset life.
Conduct component derating analyses, stress-strength assessments, and margin calculations to mitigate infant mortality and wear-out failure modes during design.
Support procurement and supplier quality activities by qualifying critical components, reviewing supplier DFMEAs, and ensuring suppliers meet reliability and safety requirements.
Perform risk assessments and risk register management across project phases; lead LOPA and consequence analysis to ensure risk reduction is demonstrable and sustained.
Train engineering, operations, and maintenance teams on safety processes, FMEA methodology, incident reporting, and reliability best practices to build organizational resilience.
Integrate field data and warranty analytics into continuous reliability improvement cycles; prioritize design changes and service bulletins based on cost of failure and safety impact.
Lead cross-functional reliability reviews and safety assurance boards to make go/no-go recommendations at design gates and production milestones.
Prepare and present technical safety cases, failure budgets, and reliability forecasts for product certification, customer reviews, and executive briefings.
Manage configuration control for safety-critical documentation and ensure traceability from requirements through verification and validation artifacts.
Maintain up-to-date knowledge of industry regulations, standards, and best practices (IEC 61508, ISO 26262, DO-178, MIL-STD, API, OSHA) and ensure designs and processes comply with applicable requirements.
Define system redundancy, fault tolerance, diagnostics, and safe-state behaviors; propose architectural changes to meet availability and safety targets while optimizing cost and complexity.
Collaborate with software teams to conduct software hazard analysis (SHA), software FMEA, and verification of watchdogs, exception handling, and safe shutdown mechanisms.
Support reliability-centered design reviews and propose cost-effective reliability improvements balancing BOM, maintainability, and field serviceability.
Drive continuous improvement and lessons-learned loops by conducting post-incident reviews, capturing corrective actions, and ensuring sustained implementation.
Coordinate third-party testing, external certification activities, and regulatory agency interactions to achieve product approvals and maintain operational licenses.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
Assist procurement and supply chain teams with risk scoring of critical suppliers and parts where reliability and safety are impacted.
Provide subject matter expertise for customer-facing safety documentation, MTBF justification, and reliability claims in proposals.
Support business continuity and emergency response planning from a reliability and safety perspective.
Mentor junior engineers and interns in reliability tools, safety methods, and incident investigation techniques.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Proficient in FMEA/FMECA development and facilitation, with proven ability to drive mitigations and ownership through to implementation.
Experience performing HAZOP, LOPA, Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), Event Tree Analysis (ETA), and consequence modeling for complex systems.
Hands-on knowledge of Reliability Engineering tools and software (ReliaSoft Weibull++, ALTA, RBD, BlockSim, MATLAB/Simulink, Python for reliability analytics).
Strong statistical and data analysis skills, including Weibull analysis, life data analysis, survival analysis, and hypothesis testing.
Competence in performing Safety Integrity Level (SIL) or ASIL determination and verification, including familiarity with IEC 61508, ISO 26262, or equivalent standards.
Proven ability to develop reliability models (MTBF, MTTR), reliability block diagrams, and perform Monte Carlo simulations for availability forecasting.
Experience with root cause analysis techniques (5 Whys, Ishikawa, 8D, A3) and CAPA management systems.
Knowledge of HALT/HASS, accelerated life testing, environmental testing, and test plan design for reliability validation.
Familiarity with systems engineering processes, requirements traceability, configuration management, and MBSE tools.
Practical experience with condition-based monitoring, prognostics, predictive maintenance algorithms, and CMMS integration.
Ability to author and maintain safety cases, hazard logs, test matrices, and regulatory submission documents.
Strong command of reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) principles and preventive maintenance optimization.
Experience with supplier qualification for safety-critical components and performing supplier DFMEA reviews.
Solid understanding of electrical, mechanical, and software failure modes and architectural mitigations (redundancy, fault isolation).
Proficient in data visualization and reporting tools (Power BI, Tableau, Excel advanced modeling) to communicate reliability and safety metrics.

Soft Skills

Strong systems thinking and ability to synthesize cross-disciplinary inputs into clear safety and reliability requirements.
Excellent written and verbal communication; able to produce clear safety cases, executive summaries, and technical reports for stakeholders and regulators.
Proven leadership and influencing skills; capable of driving change across engineering, manufacturing, and operations without direct authority.
Detail-oriented with a disciplined approach to documentation, traceability, and audit readiness.
Problem-solving mindset with resilience to investigate complex failures and persist to closure.
Effective project management skills: prioritization, planning, and delivery of high-impact reliability improvement initiatives.
Collaborative team player who excels in cross-functional environments and agile product development cycles.
Customer-focused orientation with the ability to translate reliability metrics into business impact and user value.
Coaching and mentoring capability to upskill teams in reliability tools and safety practices.
Strong ethical judgment and commitment to safety-first decision making.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Systems Engineering, Reliability Engineering, or a closely related technical discipline.

Preferred Education:

Master’s degree in Reliability Engineering, Safety Engineering, Systems Engineering, or an MBA with a technical emphasis.
Professional certifications such as Certified Reliability Engineer (ASQ CRE), Functional Safety Engineer (TÜV/Exida), ISA/IEC 61508 practitioner, or ISO 26262 certification are highly desirable.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Mechanical Engineering
Electrical/Electronic Engineering
Systems Engineering
Reliability/Safety Engineering
Aerospace/Automotive Engineering

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 5–10+ years of experience in reliability engineering, safety engineering, systems engineering, or related roles with progressively increasing responsibility.

Preferred:

7+ years of direct experience leading safety and reliability activities in regulated industries (aerospace, automotive, medical devices, industrial equipment, energy).
Demonstrated track record of delivering reliability improvements, reducing failure rates, and supporting product certification or regulatory approvals.
Experience with cross-functional leadership in product development lifecycle, including production release, field support, and warranty reduction initiatives.