About Us
Fortescue is both a proud West Australian company and a global green solutions business. We are recognised for our culture, innovation and industry-leading development of infrastructure, mining assets and green energy initiatives.
Our Opportunity
Work Location: Perth
Roster: Monday to Friday
The Principal Architect - Collision Avoidance Systems leads the end-to-end architecture and engineering for a collision avoidance product deployed across mining operations. The role oversees the full lifecycle of the system from requirements definition through architecture, design, development oversight, and validation.
Working in close partnership with the Product Manager, the Principal Architect is jointly accountable for product delivery, safety outcomes, and system performance. The role ensures the collision avoidance system operates reliably across multiple asset classes, including human-operated haul trucks, heavy machinery (e.g. wheel loaders), and light vehicles, and integrates coherently with the Autonomous Haulage System (AHS) within the broader product portfolio.
Key Responsibilities
* Lead a team to deliver a robust, safety-critical collision avoidance system across multiple asset classes
* Jointly accountable with the Product Manager for delivery of the collision avoidance product, balancing safety, scope, schedule, and technical risk
* Define and maintain the end-to-end system architecture, including system decomposition, interface definitions, and allocation of functionality across subsystems
* Enforce and contribute to the portfolio architectural standards, design principles, and governance processes appropriate for safety-critical and real-time systems
* Oversee architectural alignment across solution, and software designs, ensuring consistency with system intent and requirements
* Ensure all designs embed safety-by-design principles, including redundancy, fault detection, fail-safe behaviour, and graceful degradation
* Contribute to the architectures between the collision avoidance system and the Autonomous Haulage System, supporting autonomous and mixed-mode operations
* Collaborate closely with Systems Engineering, Verification and Validation, and site stakeholders to ensure designs are verifiable, testable, and operationally effective
* Provide technical leadership across the full product lifecycle, supporting development, integration, validation, and deployment activities for both hardware and software.
Qualifications and Experience
* Bachelor's or Master's degree in Systems Engineering, Software Engineering, Computer Science, or a related discipline
* 10+ years of experience in systems architecture, systems engineering, embedded software or safety-critical product development, with at least 5 years in a senior technical leadership role
* Proven experience leading end-to-end system architecture in complex, regulated, or safety- critical domains (e.g. aerospace, automotive safety, rail, robotics, industrial automation, or mining)
* Strong expertise in requirements management, system decomposition, interface definition, and architectural governance
* Experience overseeing development across heterogeneous platforms and asset classes
* Solid understanding of development methodologies such as the V-Model, model-based systems engineering, and Agile in safety-critical contexts
* Hands-on experience with cloud and edge computing platforms (e.g. AWS, Azure) and containerization technologies (e.g. Kubernetes)
* Familiarity with collision avoidance systems, autonomous haulage systems, or functional safety concepts is highly desirable
* Proven experience leading product delivery through the full product development lifecycle, from concept to validation (DVP&R).
Our Commitment
Fortescue is deeply committed to providing a safe culture that builds respect, fosters inclusiveness, and values diversity. We celebrate individual strengths and team members from all backgrounds are encouraged to bring their whole selves to work. Our global workforce drives and promotes an inclusive culture, both within our organisation and throughout the communities we interact with across the world. Diverse backgrounds include First Nations Peoples, people with differing abilities, LGBTIQ+ community, gender, neurodiverse, cultural diversity, all age groups, and those with an intersectional or multiple diverse characteristics. We encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply.
Internal Candidates / Current Contractors please apply via Success Factors Careers Portal. For further information on how to apply please visit the Fortescue Hub.
Fortescue reserves the right to close applications early should a suitable pool of candidates be identified. Fortescue will never contact you to ask for payment of any kind, whether directly or through a third party