> Obviously, the responsibility is firmly on management. People making code bugs should not be held responsible for other people going to prison for it.

This is a controversial opinion but I disagree, at least to a point. Managers don’t really know what we do. The only people who really understand the engineering trade offs involved are engineers. When lives are on the line as a result of our work, we shouldn’t be insulated from the consequences of our choices. That’s not good for society and ultimately not good for us. We change the world with our work. It’s healthy to understand and own the consequences of that.

The law agrees in parts. The principle of tort law is that everyone is responsible for foreseeable harm caused to your “neighbours”. Your degree of responsibility - and in turn liability - scales with how much expertise you have in the domain. An expert should have been able to foresee the harm more than a novice. The senior engineers on the team should have done better. I believe they are at fault.

(IANAL, this is not legal advice, yadda yadda)