Senior Data Engineer- Large Driving Model, Autonomy

Rivian is on a mission to keep the world adventurous forever. This goes for the emissions-free Electric Adventure Vehicles we build, and the curious, courageous souls we seek to attract. 

As a company, we constantly challenge what’s possible, never simply accepting what has always been done. We reframe old problems, seek new solutions and operate comfortably in areas that are unknown. Our backgrounds are diverse, but our team shares a love of the outdoors and a desire to protect it for future generations. 

We are seeking Senior Data Engineers to play a pivotal role in the development of our Large Driving Model (LDM). In this role, you will take ownership of the data pipelines and curation strategies that fuel our models. You will be responsible for building miners that surface high-value examples, refining evaluation benchmarks, and collaborating directly with modeling teams to accelerate performance.

If you are a strong individual contributor with a deep background in Python, a passion for autonomous systems, and the ability to navigate complex data challenges independently, we want to hear from you.

• Develop and maintain scalable data mining pipelines to extract rare and critical driving
  scenarios from massive fleet datasets.
• Lead the curation and analysis of large-scale training sets to improve the robustness and
  generalization of the LDM.
• Design and implement rigorous evaluation frameworks to measure model performance against real-world baselines.
• Provide technical guidance and code reviews for junior and mid-level engineers, ensuring high standards for code quality and system design.
• Partner closely with modeling engineers to define data requirements and iterate on rapid
  experimental loops.
• Identify trends, anomalies, and data distribution shifts that impact model training and validation.
• Contribute to the design of data infrastructure, making informed decisions on tradeoffs between data quality, scale, and compute efficiency.
• Transition experimental data strategies into production-ready pipelines with a focus on Python-based automation.

• B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• 5+ years of experience as a Data Engineer, Machine Learning Engineer, or Motion
  Planning Engineer, specifically within the autonomous driving, robotics, or computer vision space.
• Advanced proficiency in Python and SQL is required, with a proven track record of building production-grade data products.
• Hands-on experience with distributed data processing frameworks (e.g., Spark, Ray) and cloud infrastructure.
• Solid understanding of data-centric AI, dataset curation strategies, and model evaluation methodologies.
• Experience handling large-scale sensor data or complex robotics telemetry.
• Demonstrated ability to work autonomously, taking projects from a vague concept to a verified, high performing product.
• Strong ability to communicate technical trade-offs and collaborate effectively within a fast-paced team environment.

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Proficiency in C++.
• Hands-on experience in robotics or autonomous systems.

The salary range for this role is $179,000.00 - $223,800.00 for California based applicants. This is the lowest to highest salary we in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. An employee’s position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to, specific competencies, relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, shift, and organizational needs.

Equal Opportunity

Rivian is an equal opportunity employer and complies with all applicable federal, state, and local fair employment practices laws. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information or characteristics, physical or mental disability, marital/domestic partner status, age, military/veteran status, medical condition, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Rivian is committed to ensuring that our hiring process is accessible for persons with disabilities. If you have a disability or limitation, such as those covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act, that requires accommodations to assist you in the search and application process, please email us at  View email address on ev.careers .

Candidate Data Privacy

Rivian may collect, use and disclose your personal information or personal data (within the meaning of the applicable data protection laws) when you apply for employment and/or participate in our recruitment processes (“Candidate Personal Data”). This data includes contact, demographic, communications, educational, professional, employment, social media/website, network/device, recruiting system usage/interaction, security and preference information. Rivian may use your Candidate Personal Data for the purposes of (i) tracking interactions with our recruiting system; (ii) carrying out, analyzing and improving our application and recruitment process, including assessing you and your application and conducting employment, background and reference checks; (iii) establishing an employment relationship or entering into an employment contract with you; (iv) complying with our legal, regulatory and corporate governance obligations; (v) recordkeeping; (vi) ensuring network and information security and preventing fraud; and (vii) as otherwise required or permitted by applicable law.

Rivian may share your Candidate Personal Data with (i) internal personnel who have a need to know such information in order to perform their duties, including individuals on our People Team, Finance, Legal, and the team(s) with the position(s) for which you are applying; (ii) Rivian affiliates; and (iii) Rivian’s service providers, including providers of background checks, staffing services, and cloud services.

Rivian may transfer or store internationally your Candidate Personal Data, including to or in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the European Union and in the cloud, and this data may be subject to the laws and accessible to the courts, law enforcement and national security authorities of such jurisdictions. 

Please note that we are currently not accepting applications from third party application services.