Process Safety Engineer
Menlo Park · USD 200,000-250,000 · 7-10 years experience · Full-time · Onsite · Posted Oct 7, 2026
At a glance
- Experience
- 7-10 years experience
- Employment
- Full-time
- Workplace
- Onsite
- Location
- Menlo Park
- Salary
- USD 200,000-250,000 · OTE
- Visa sponsorship
- Visa sponsorship available
About Periodic Labs
- We’re an AI and physical sciences company building state-of-the-art models to accelerate breakthroughs across materials, energy, and beyond. Backed by world-class investors and growing rapidly, we operate at the pace the frontier requires. Our team brings deep expertise, genuine ownership, and an insatiable drive to push the boundaries of what’s scientifically possible.
About the role
- Periodic Labs is seeking a Process Safety Engineer to focus on operational safety, ensuring every new process, tool, and autonomous workflow is hazard-reviewed, safe to start up, and safe to run around the clock.
- This role involves integrating environmental health and safety as a core design discipline that enables autonomous science, including helping train AI to reason about risk during experimental planning and execution.
Responsibilities
- Lead and document HAZOPs, PHA/FMEA, and risk assessments for new processes and lab systems, including toxic and pyrophoric material, high-pressure operations, glovebox workflows, and thin-film deposition platforms.
- Establish operational readiness and laboratory reliability systems for autonomous operations, including pre-startup safety reviews (PSSR), management of change (MOC), commissioning validation, alarm rationalization, startup/shutdown procedures, and critical equipment inspection programs.
- Partner with automation and controls teams to implement machine safeguarding, fail-safes, interlocks, robotics safety controls, functional safety validation, safety PLC reviews, and automated motion hazard assessments for autonomous experimental systems.
- Develop and maintain EHS standards, specifications, procedures, and governance systems that can scale across multiple facilities.
- Collaborate with ML/AI engineers on training an LLM to reason through process hazards, risk assessments, and safety constraints during experimental planning and autonomous execution.
- Provide technical expertise in high-throughput R&D with a strong focus on chemical safety, including the thin-film lab's specialty gas delivery, vacuum, and RF/high-voltage systems.
- Lead incident investigations and root cause analyses, own injury reporting and recordkeeping (Cal/OSHA 300 log, serious-injury reporting), and drive corrective actions to closure.
- Assess permitting and MAQ implications of new processes and chemistries across our labs, represent process safety during fire marshal and CUPA inspections, and partner with EHS operations on CERS and BAAQMD compliance.
- Serve as Chemical Hygiene Officer, maintaining the Chemical Hygiene Plan across our labs.
Requirements
- 7–10+ years of experience in EHS, process safety, or chemical operations in labs, pilot plants, or semiconductor fabs, preferably with a strong chemistry background.
- Hands-on experience leading HAZOPs or FMEAs and running PSSR and MOC programs.
- Working knowledge of functional safety: interlocks, safety PLCs, and ISO 13849 / IEC 61508 concepts.
- Working knowledge of Cal/OSHA, OSHA PELs, ACGIH TLVs/BEIs, NIOSH, and ANSI standards.
- Comfort working on-site in a fast-paced, high-complexity lab environment where experiments run 24/7 and the hazard profile evolves as new processes and equipment are introduced.
- Bachelor’s degree or similar experience
Preferred qualifications
- Certified Safety Professional (CSP), Associate Safety Professional (ASP), Certified Industrial Hygienist (CIH), or similar credential.
- Experience with semiconductor or thin-film process safety: HF, toxic and pyrophoric gases, gas cabinets, and SEMI S2.
- Experience designing EHS systems for autonomous or semi-autonomous lab environments where processes run without continuous human supervision.
- Familiarity with AI or ML tools as applied to risk assessment, safety documentation, or experimental planning or genuine curiosity about how to apply them.
Skills
- PHA
- FMEA
- PSSR
- MOC
- Safety PLC
- ISO 13849
- IEC 61508
- Cal/OSHA
- OSHA
- ANSI
- SEMI S2
