Systems & Safety Engineering Intern [Summer 2027]

About Our Internship Program

Zoox’s internship program offers hands-on experience with cutting-edge technology, mentorship from some of the industry's brightest minds, and the opportunity to make meaningful contributions to real projects. We seek interns who demonstrate strong academic performance, engagement beyond the classroom, intellectual curiosity, and a genuine interest in Zoox's mission to create autonomous mobility from the ground up.

Job Description

As an intern in the Platform Safety Engineering & Assurance (PSEA-Core)team within System Design & Mission Assurance, you will help build and ensure the highest standards of safety, rigor, and system architecture for Zoox’s purpose-built robotaxi. Our team is responsible for developing robust safety work products, evaluating failure modes, decomposing requirements, and building state-of-the-art tools and AI workflows to maintain safety compliance and system traceability across the vehicle platform.

In this Role, You Will…

• Leverage and build AI-assisted engineering workflowsto generate, maintain, and verify safety work products aligned with industry standards (e.g., ISO 26262).
• Decompose system-level requirements and interfaces, analyzing how failure modes propagate across complex hardware, software, and autonomous subsystems.
• Develop Python-based automation and data analysis scriptsto extract metrics, validate system requirements, and automate safety analysis workflows.
• Collaborate cross-functionallywith systems engineers, hardware/software designers, and validation teams to drive safety traceability and continuous improvement.

Internship Requirements

• Currently working towards a B.S., M.S., Ph.D., or advanced degree in Systems Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, Mechanical Engineering, or a related discipline.
• Good academic standing at an accredited college or university.
• Expected to graduate between Fall 2027 and Summer 2028, and enrolled at an accredited institution throughout the internship.
• Able to commit to a full-time, 12-week internship beginning in May/June 2027.
• Ability to relocate to the Bay Area, California, for the duration of the internship.
• Interns at Zoox may not use any proprietary information they are working on as part of their thesis, any published work with their university, or to be distributed to anyone outside of Zoox.

Qualifications

• System Design & Failure Reasoning:Basic understanding of system architecture-breaking complex systems into functions, defining interfaces, and reasoning about failure propagation (e.g., hazard analysis, FMEA, or FTA concepts).
• Python Automation & Data Analysis:Demonstrated proficiency in Python for data analysis, scripting, parsing requirements/test data, or building automated tools.
• Probability & Statistics Foundations:Solid foundation in probability and statistics to evaluate reliability, metrics, and quantitative system behavior.
• AI-Assisted Engineering Judgment:Hands-on experience using modern AI tools and agents (LLM assistants, prompt pipelines, coding agents) in engineering or research, with a disciplined habit of validating AI outputs against specs, standards, or empirical data.
• Technical Communication & Requirements:Strong written and verbal communication skills, including comfort writing clear, structured, and testable engineering requirements.

Bonus Qualifications

• Safety Standards & Analysis Exposure:Familiarity with automotive functional safety standards (ISO 26262, SOTIF/ISO 21448) or hazard analysis methodologies (FTA, FMEA, HARA).
• Advanced AI Workflows & ALM Tools:Experience designing agentic or LLM workflows beyond simple chat (e.g., document retrieval/RAG, function calling, agent frameworks) or experience with requirements management tools (Polarion, DOORS, Jama, Jira).
• Domain & Software Practices:Background in automotive, aerospace, or robotics systems, paired with familiarity with Git version control, SQL, and software verification practices.