Senior Lead, People Process Excellence & AI

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. 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 About The Team The People Operational Excellence & AI team sits at the intersection of process design, people systems, and artificial intelligence. We build the operating infrastructure that enables Rivian's 14,000+ person workforce – from the plant floor in Normal, IL to corporate and commercial teams – to move faster, smarter, and with fewer manual workarounds. We own the technology portfolio, AI adoption strategy, and process transformation agenda for Rivian's People function. Our current priorities span a portfolio of AI-enabled automation initiatives across the employee lifecycle – all in service of building a People team that operates with the same rigor and precision as the vehicles we make. About The Role We're looking for someone who can map a broken process in the morning and design an AI-assisted future state in the afternoon. This role is the connective tissue between how Rivian's People team works today and how it needs to work to meet the growing demands and complexity of our rapidly scaling global organization. This is a consulting, project management, and hands-on builder role all at once. It's an operator who diagnoses like a consultant, drives like a project manager, designs like a systems thinker, and builds things that stick. Why This Role Matters Design the way People work: Help define how core People work is structured, documented, and executed across COEs, Shared Services, Talent Acquisition, and People Partners so Rivian can scale with less friction and more clarity. Unlock capacity through AI and automation: Identify practical opportunities to apply AI agents, workflow automation, and knowledge management to reduce manual work, improve quality, and create more space for strategic work. Connect process reality to platform decisions: Bridge People, IT, and Data to ensure our systems and workflows reflect how work actually happens on the ground — not just how it is intended to happen on paper. Strengthen the foundation for scale: As Rivian continues to grow, help standardize global practices, improve cross-team handoffs, and build the People infrastructure needed to support a 14,000+ person workforce across manufacturing, commercial, and corporate environments. Responsibilities Process Mapping & Redesign Map processes end-to-end, not just on paper. Lead current and future-state process mapping across People initiatives — from Talent Acquisition and Internal Mobility to onboarding, employee support, and shared services. Go deep enough to surface the real problems: the workarounds, the undocumented exceptions, and the places where work falls through the cracks between teams. Establish practical standards. Define process design, documentation, handoff, and governance standards so teams can execute more consistently and scale with less variability. Identify and eliminate friction. Surface sources of avoidable demand and manual lift, then lead simplification efforts with measurable impact on cycle time, quality, throughput, and user experience. AI, Automation & Digital Enablement Design AI-and-Workday-enabled process solutions. Translate process problems into concrete solutions that leverage Workday and AI agents. Prototype where it helps make the idea real, and partner with Workday and Engineering teams to get them built. Turn process maps into system requirements. Translate mapped workflows into clear, actionable requirements that Engineering & Technology partners can build and configure in Workday, ServiceNow, iCIMS, and related tools. Be the bridge between what the business needs and what the technology team delivers. Build working solutions, not just recommendations. Use AI-assisted development tools to move from a business problem to a working prototype alongside HR leaders — building custom scripts, lightweight automations, and workflow tools that solve real, everyday pain without waiting in an engineering queue. You don't need to be a software engineer; you need to be someone who can sit with a stakeholder, understand what's actually broken, and ship something that works. Find and scope automation opportunities. Identify where AI agents, workflow automation, case deflection, or LLM-assisted tools can eliminate manual lift — and where they can't. Develop structured business cases for investment prioritization, including effort estimates, projected savings, and risk. Apply sound judgment. Distinguish where AI creates real leverage, where workflow automation is the better answer, and where process redesign or change management is the actual need. Measurement & Operational Rigor Measure what matters. Define baseline and target metrics — cycle time, cost, volume, error rate — for every process redesign, and build the dashboards needed to track adoption and savings after launch, not just at the design stage. Partner with IT, People Systems, and Data teams to ensure solutions are grounded in real workflows, integrated thoughtfully, and supported by strong measurement and feedback loops. Facilitation & Cross-Functional Leadership Facilitate high-stakes working sessions. Run process mapping workshops, future-state design sessions, and cross-functional working groups with HR leaders, HRBPs, Talent Acquisition, Enterprise Technology, Shared Services, and operational teams. Come in prepared, keep things moving, and leave with decisions made and owners named. Lead change management and adoption. Drive communication and adoption efforts tied to process redesign, work transitions, and new digital capabilities across the People organization. Influence through ambiguity. Help teams clarify roles, build new habits, and adopt more scalable ways of working during periods of high change. Internal Consulting & AI Fluency Act as an internal process consultant. Embed in People initiatives as a strategic thought partner – not just a documenter. Diagnose root causes, challenge assumptions, recommend redesigns, and help leaders distinguish between a process problem, a systems problem, and a change management problem. Streamline how the People team works. Identify friction in the team's internal operating model – handoffs, decision rights, communication loops, duplicated effort – and build infrastructure that helps the function operate with more consistency and less noise. Build AI fluency across the team. Stay current on relevant tools, run practical experiments, and help the broader People team develop the capability to work with AI in their day-to-day. Contribute to Rivian's internal AI learning program. Qualifications 6+ years of experience in People Operations, HR transformation, process excellence, management consulting, or related fields within complex, scaling organizations, with a track record of redesigning — not just documenting — cross-functional processes. Strong working knowledge of Workday — not configuration ownership, but deep enough fluency in its data model, workflows, and capabilities that you can translate a process problem into a real Workday-based solution and write requirements the Workday team can build from. You know what the system can and can't do without needing to build it yourself. Practical fluency with AI tools and agentic workflows. You understand how AI agents are built – prompting, tool/function calling, system integration – well enough to design real solutions and prototype where useful, then scope and hand off cleanly to engineering for production builds. Strong systems-thinking capability, with the ability to connect strategy, operations, employee experience, data, and technology into clear and actionable recommendations. Strong facilitation skills: capable of running a workshop with skeptical stakeholders and arriving at a clear process map, agreed-on requirements, and concrete next steps. Ability to move fluidly between strategic framing and hands-on execution – you write the brief and do the work. Clear, concise written communication: you'll regularly translate operational complexity into technical requirements and stakeholder-ready narratives. Experience partnering closely with IT, digital, systems, or engineering teams to define requirements, evaluate options, and prioritize work across platforms. Comfort operating in ambiguity. Rivian moves fast. The problems are rarely fully defined when you arrive. Preferred Qualifications Experience in high-growth technology, EV, manufacturing, or similarly complex operating environments. Background in Lean, Six Sigma, design thinking, or service design applied to People or service-delivery processes. Experience designing AI governance frameworks or responsible AI policies for HR applications. Prior experience supporting global HR operations, shared services, employee service delivery, or other scaled operating models. Experience supporting manufacturing, plant operations, or deskless/hourly workforce environments. Pay Disclosure The salary range for this role is $140,400 - $175,500 for Palo Alto, CA based applicants and $117,900 - $147,400 for Georgia and Illinois 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. 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. 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 click.appcast.io. 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. #J-18808-Ljbffr