Sr. AI Engineer, Product Devleopment

About Rivian

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.


Role Summary

We are looking for an AI Engineer who will support our Product Development organization by implementing scalable AI tools that improve Product Development efficiency, productivity, and quality. As an AI Engineer on the Product Development AI and Data Science team, you will be at the center of Rivian's AI flywheel for developing software-defined hardware products. Our mission is to bring clarity, rigor, and scale to the complex decisions required to build the world's most adventurous electric vehicles.

We're building an intelligent operating system for engineering. You will spend your time at the intersection of product development, software engineering, data science, and LLM orchestration. You will work closely with senior technical staff to automate manual engineering workflows, build predictive models, and deploy agentic AI tools that allow our engineers to focus on innovation rather than administration.

The ideal candidate has an understanding of engineering processes for physical products and experience working with agent harnesses, telemetry, and Product Lifecycle Management data. They are capable of developing technical plans in close collaboration with senior technical staff and a wide range of stakeholders and functional teams. They are adept at evaluating existing processes and data ecosystems to find opportunities for optimization and using quantitative approaches to test the effectiveness of different courses of action. The right candidate will be able to assess ambiguous problem spaces and determine the right technical approach ranging from traditional analytics to data science and machine learning to LLM applications.

They must have strong experience using a variety of data analysis methods, building and implementing AI agent harnesses, and a demonstrated ability to quickly ramp up on domain-specific data systems.

Responsibilities

• Design & Deploy AI Agents: Partner with senior technical staff to build and orchestrate agentic AI workflows and LLM-powered systems that automate complex engineering tasks such as documentation auditing, requirement generation, and technical knowledge retrieval.
• Construct AI-Ready Data Layers: Develop, validate, and maintain ETL pipelines and data structures-including knowledge graphs and vector databases-required to provide high-fidelity context to AI applications across siloed engineering systems.
• Execute AI Trials : Lead rapid, high-velocity technical trials to evaluate the viability of emerging AI techniques. You will take projects from initial concept to functional prototype to identify which solutions can most effectively reduce engineering labor.
• Bridge Prototype to Production: Transform early-stage prototypes into robust, highly performant, and scalable enterprise systems.
• Develop Evaluation Frameworks: Define and monitor quantitative performance requirements (accuracy, grounding, latency, and cost) to ensure AI tools meet the rigorous safety and reliability standards of vehicle engineering.
• Engineering Process Optimization: Collaborate with cross-functional partners to identify manual engineering workflows and implement AI-driven automations that improve overall product development efficiency and productivity.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's, master's, or PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science, Physics, Mathematics, or another quantitative field
• Ideally 4-6+ years of experience building production data pipelines and developing AI/ML solutions (LLM-based applications experience preferred).
• Agentic programming proficiency: You should be highly experienced with repository context engineering, AI-native IDEs & terminals, agentic loop optimization, and AI coding quality & technical debt mitigation.
• Agent Harness Engineering: Hands-on experience or deep academic exposure to LLM orchestration and application concepts, including RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), agentic frameworks, context engineering, grounding, evaluation, and cost/latency optimization.
• Probabilistic Testing & Evaluation Engineering: Deep understanding of how AI systems fail differently than traditional software. Ability to construct statistical validation tests, establish tolerance thresholds, and track output distributions.
• Software Fundamentals: Demonstrated experience with version control (Git), eval-driven CI/CD pipelines, probabilistic validation of AI systems, deployment, and end-to-end system ownership to contribute to a production environment.
• Infrastructure & Scaling: high-throughput storage systems, containerized harness orchestration, security and sandbox environments.
• Experience with Unstructured Data: Ability to extract, clean, and structure data from technical documents, requirements, or engineering specifications.
• Domain Context: Prior experience in physical engineering systems (Hardware, IoT, or Telemetry).
• Strong problem-solving skills with an emphasis on product development
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills for coordinating across teams and leading cross-functional efforts
• A drive to learn and master new technologies and techniques

NICE TO HAVE:

• Exposure to graph technologies (e.g., Neo4j, Knowledge Graphs) or vector databases (e.g., Pinecone).
• Knowledge of advanced statistical techniques and concepts (regression, properties of distributions, statistical tests and proper usage, etc.) and experience with applications
• Knowledge of a variety of machine learning techniques (clustering, tree-based methods, deep learning, etc.) and their real-world advantages/drawbacks
• Experience building user-facing applications.
• Experience with distributed data/computing tools: Spark, Databricks, Google Cloud Platform, etc.
• Experience with DBT.
• Passion: An obsession with electric vehicles, renewable energy, and the future of sustainable transportation.

Pay Disclosure

The salary range for this role is USD 107,000 - 133,700 for California based applicants with 1-4 years of industry experience. The job title will be "AI Engineer II, Product Development".

The salary range for this role is USD 135,100 - 168,900 for California based applicants with 4-6+ years of industry experience. The job title will be "Sr. AI Engineer, Product Development".

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.

The successful candidate may be eligible for annual performance bonus and equity awards.

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits for full-time and part-time employees, their spouse or domestic partner, and children up to age 26, including but not limited to paid vacation, paid sick leave, and a competitive portfolio of insurance benefits including life, medical, dental, vision, short-term disability insurance, and long-term disability insurance to eligible employees. You may also have the opportunity to participate in Rivian's 401(k) Plan and Employee Stock Purchase Program if you meet certain eligibility requirements. Full-time employee coverage is effective on their first day of employment. Part-time employee coverage is effective the first of the month following 90 days of employment. More information about benefits is available at rivianbenefits.com.

You can apply for this role through careers.rivian.com (or through internal-careers-rivian.icims.com if you are a current employee). This job is not expected to be closed any sooner than October 20, 2026.

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

Candidate Data Privacy and Technology

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.

How We Use AI in Our Hiring Process: To ensure transparency, we want candidates to know that Rivian uses iCIMS Talent Cloud Artificial Intelligence (TCAI) and AI-enabled tools to assist with screening, reviewing, organizing and highlighting profiles and applications that match the key requirements for each role.

AI does not make hiring decisions: Qualified candidate applications are reviewed by a member of our team, and all decisions throughout the process are made by humans. We use AI to support efficiency and consistency, not to replace human judgment. We are committed to a fair, thoughtful, and equitable experience for every candidate.

Participation in AI profile matching is entirely voluntary. If you prefer that your profile not be used in this process, you can opt out at any time. Opting out means your profile will be excluded from automated matching and will not be surfaced for additional roles through this system. Your current application remains active and will not be affected in any way.

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