Staff Vehicle Architecture Engineer

The posting, as Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies wrote it

ABOUT US

Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies is a joint venture between two industry leaders with a clear vision for automotive’s next chapter. From operating systems to zonal controllers to cloud and connectivity solutions, we’re addressing the challenges of electric vehicles through technology that will set the standards for software-defined vehicles around the world.

The road to the future is uncharted. By combining our expertise across connectivity, AI, security and more, we’ll map a new way forward. Working together, we’ll create a future that’s more connected, more intelligent, more sustainable for everyone.

ROLE SUMMARY

The Vehicle System Architecture team owns the vehicle-level mechatronic architecture at Rivian VW Group Technologies. We translate product intent from Brand Product Definition, Program, Cost Engineering, Manufacturing, Strategy and Reliability into parts and function distribution across the vehicle — from product concept through manufacturing.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Architecture Modeling and Trade Studies

• Build and own the parametric models behind vehicle architecture decisions: controller count and placement, functional allocation across zonal and secondary ECUs, sensor and actuator distribution, harness topology.
• Run architecture trade studies with quantified outcomes — cost, mass, harness complexity, power, temperature and environmental, reliability, manufacturability — and ship each study with its model, parameters and sensitivity analysis.
• Build the cost and BOM models that turn architecture options into numbers
• Support cost-down by subtraction: use the models to show which controllers, harness runs and sensors the vehicle can do without, before anyone optimizes what is left.
• Analyze new technology integration with SW HW platform design approach

Applied AI for Architecture Work

• Build LLM and agentic pipelines over architecture artifacts: extracting device and interface data from specifications, generating and checking candidate architecture configurations, and surfacing gaps across requirements, device lists and interface definitions.
• Deploy semantic search over requirements, architecture models, device data and prior trade studies
• Integrate AI assistance into the team's toolchain — Flow Engineering, Airtable, GitLab — via APIs and CI pipelines, with human-in-the-loop guardrails.
• Build analytics that connect architecture decisions to what happened downstream: field issues, manufacturing escapes, cost variance — so the next trade study starts better informed,

Systems Engineering, Hands-On

• Contribute to vehicle-level STPA, DFMEA and fault analyses, and feed findings back into the architecture and its models.
• Participate in architecture, interface and safety design reviews across domains.
• Correlate models against real vehicle, lab rig and supplier data
• Document the methods you build as playbooks other engineers can run.

QUALIFICATIONS

Minimum Qual
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Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies 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 and Volkswagen Group Technologies affiliates; and (iii) Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies’ service providers, including providers of background checks, staffing services, and cloud services.

Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies may transfer or store internationally your Candidate Personal Data, including to or in the United States, Canada, 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.

If you provide a mobile telephone number as part of your application or during the recruitment process, Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies may use that number to contact you via SMS text message for recruitment-related purposes, including scheduling, logistics, and status updates. Message and data rates may apply. You may opt out of SMS communications at any time by replying STOP to any text message you receive from us. Consent to receive SMS messages is not a condition of applying for or being considered for employment.

Please see our Candidate Data Privacy Notice (English) https://assets.ctfassets.net/2md5qhoeajym/53otRWdzXPzSdWPgiel5T/07c61b0eed2d91f2f403f788fd20d315/RVTech_Candidate_Data_Privacy_Notice_-_Nov_2024.pdf and Candidate Data Privacy Notice (Serbian) https://assets.ctfassets.net/2md5qhoeajym/40xUZMehbGToclkLqWXW0E/eb5b553bd8af7c607066253fbb227bda/RVTech_Candidate_Data_Privacy_Notice_-_Nov_2024_Serbian.pdf for more information.

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Please note this job posting represents an open, active vacancy. Additionally, we are not currently accepting applications from third party application services.