Functional Safety & Cybersecurity Manager

Location: Pune, India | On-site
Experience: 8+ Years
Employment Type: Full time, Permanent
Reporting To: HMI & E/E Lead

About Aerpace

We are developing a D-segment battery-electric coupe for the Indian premium market, targeting start of production at the end of the decade. The E/E architecture is zonal with centralised compute: a high-performance central SoC covering cockpit, ADAS, gateway and supervisory vehicle control, an independent ASIL-D safety MCU chosen partly for instruction-set diversity, and zone controllers distributed through the vehicle.

The E/E and HMI department is deliberately small, around twelve engineers at peak. We own requirements, architecture, integration, validation strategy, homologation evidence and the technical management of our suppliers; production code, lab labour and test services are bought.

About the Role

We are building the functional safety and cybersecurity function from a blank page. This is not maintaining an inherited framework. It is designing the processes, standing up the CSMS and SUMS, engaging the certification body and carrying them through audit.

You will be the sole owner of this domain, without direct reports, for the first 1218 months. If you have spent years operating a framework someone else built and want to find out whether you can build one, this is that role.

You will chair the safety and cybersecurity review boards and hold veto authority over architecture decisions carrying unmitigated ASIL or TARA findings. That authority is real and held from day one, we would rather you use it early than politely.



Within the first twelve months we expect the CSMS and SUMS process architecture defined and operating, a certification body engaged and a pre-audit scheduled.

Key Responsibilities

- Own functional safety engineering in accordance with ISO 26262 across the vehicle E/E system.
- Lead cybersecurity engineering in accordance with ISO/SAE 21434.
- Establish, operate and own the Cyber Security Management System (CSMS) and Software Update Management System (SUMS) through to audit.
- Lead HARA, Item Definition, ASIL determination/decomposition and Safety Concept activities.
- Lead TARA at vehicle and item level, including OTA, diagnostics, charging and connectivity.
- Develop and maintain the Safety Case and Cybersecurity Case through SOP and into post-production monitoring activities.
- Ensure safety and cybersecurity requirements are integrated into the overall vehicle requirements baseline with full traceability, rather than held in a parallel document set.
- Chair safety and cybersecurity review boards and exercise veto authority over architecture decisions with unmitigated ASIL or TARA findings.
- Own the certification body relationship end to end, including audit preparation, evidence and close-out.
- Develop supplier assurance processes,



including DIA templates and SEooC acceptance criteria, and hold suppliers to them.
- Work closely with E/E architecture, software, HMI and supplier teams to ensure compliance and technical robustness.

Required Experience & Skills

- Hands-on experience building or materially operating a CSMS or SUMS that passed an audit.
- Proven experience taking at least one ISO 26262 programme through production release, including an ASIL-C or ASIL-D item. Concept-phase experience alone is not sufficient for this role.
- 8+ years of relevant experience in automotive functional safety and cybersecurity.
- Strong working command of ISO 26262 and ISO/SAE 21434 as processes, including TARA methodology and cybersecurity interface agreement mechanics.
- Practical experience with HARA, TARA, Safety Concepts and Cybersecurity Concepts.
- Fluency in UNECE R155 and R156 and their mapping into the Indian AIS regulatory framework.
- Experience writing DIAs and holding Tier-1 suppliers to them, including rejecting a supplier deliverable on technical grounds.
- Ability to independently establish processes and drive the function in a growing automotive organisation, without an existing team or template.

Good to Have

- TV or equivalent Functional Safety / Automotive Cybersecurity certification.
- Certification-body or assessor experience.
- ASPICE experience.
- Experience with OTA-enabled vehicles.
- Experience with Indian type-approval programmes involving ARAI/ICAT.
- Experience with BEV systems and connected vehicle architectures.

📌 Functional Safety & Cybersecurity Manager (Pune)
🏢 Aerpace
📍 Pune