Senior / Staff Safety & Systems Technical Program Manager

About the role

Waabi, founded by AI visionary Raquel Urtasun, is the leader in Physical AI. With a world-class team, we're unlocking the next era of autonomous transportation with technology that's powering commercial autonomous trucks and robotaxis. Waabi is backed by and partners with world leaders in AI, automotive, logistics, and deep tech.

With offices in Toronto, San Francisco, Dallas, and Pittsburgh, Waabi is growing quickly and looking for diverse, innovative and collaborative candidates who want to impact the world in a positive way.

As the Safety and Systems Technical Program Manager, you will drive the execution of our safety and systems engineering development efforts for our autonomous vehicle platforms.

Safety is at the core of everything we do, and we need a technical program manager to ensure our safety assessments, system architectures, and verification and validation processes (simulation and real world testing) are delivered efficiently and rigorously.

You will translate complex technical milestones into clear, centralized plans, streamline communication across engineering leads, and leverage modern AI tools to eliminate administrative friction. If you thrive on bringing structure to safety-critical engineering, aligning cross-functional teams, and clearing roadblocks before they happen, this role is for you.

You will

Collaborate with other Technical Program Managers across the company to ensure Safety, Security, and Systems plans align seamlessly with other functional areas and the organization’s feature introduction roadmap.

Consolidate project timelines, Jira tracking boards, and status updates into a centralized master plan, utilizing AI tools (like Claude) to synthesize information and limit the manual overhead required from engineering leads.

Provide clear, comprehensive executive reporting of Safety, Security, and Systems tasks, deliverables, and resources across multiple assessments, platforms, and behavioral competencies.

Track the execution of verification and validation (V&V) in simulation and real-world testing - providing dedicated TPM support to test leads so they can focus on test definition and evaluation - while applying systems engineering principles to ensure all requirements have full test coverage.

Take a leading role in organizing driverless deployment decisions through Production Readiness Reviews (PRR), coordinating the delivery of safety and Security artifacts to ensure they meet internal quality gates and timeline expectations.

Lead the alignment of continuous software evaluation activities, ensuring the Safety, Security, and Systems teams provide the right deliverables adapted to various product maturity and deployment phases.

Establish efficient issue burndown tracking methods, acting as the central liaison to route identified process, anomaly, and system performance issues to the appropriate stakeholders and drive them to resolution.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of technical program management experience, with a track record of leading complex, cross-functional technical programs.
• Direct experience in autonomous vehicles, robotics, aerospace, or another safety-critical environment spanning hardware, software, and systems.
• Strong technical fluency in systems engineering, safety assurance and requirements management.
• Hands-on experience with program tracking tools such as Jira, and a strong inclination to use modern AI solutions to streamline operational tracking and speed up critical decisions.
• Excellent written and verbal communication; comfortable summarizing complex technical statuses for leadership and facilitating working-level reviews.
• BS or MS in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.

Bonus/nice to have

• Deep understanding of the autonomous trucking domain and commercial rollouts.
• Proven history of establishing single-source-of-truth planning systems across highly distributed teams.
• Experience executing production readiness reviews (PRR).

Pay and benefits

The US yearly salary range for this role is: $193,000 - $262,000 USD and the Canada salary range for this role is: $129,000 - $191,000 CAD in addition to competitive perks & benefits. Waabi US Inc. and Waabi Canada Inc.'s yearly salary ranges are determined based on several factors in accordance with the Company’s compensation practices.

The salary base range is reflective of the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position across all US and Canada locations. Note: The Company provides additional compensation for employees in this role, including discretionary equity incentive awards and discretionary annual performance bonus.

Benefits

Waabi provides a competitive benefits package that includes:

• Competitive compensation and equity awards.
• Health and wellness benefits encompassing Medical, Dental, and Vision coverage
• Paid parental, medical and family care leave.
• Generous PTO Policy.
• Retirement savings plans including 401(k) or RRSP options.
• Health savings account contribution options.
• Daily drinks, snacks, and catered meals (when in office).
• Regularly scheduled team building activities and social events both on-site, off-site & virtually.
• Additional benefits are offered and tailored to specific country locations.
• As we grow, this list continues to evolve!
• Waabi is a technology start-up building technologies to transform the way the world moves. Join our talented team to be a part of the future and to make an impact!