Hardware Systems Performance Architect (Infotainment)

Rivian and VW Group Technology•Palo Alto, CA

60d

About The Position

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 In this position, you will lead efforts within the Hardware Systems Architecture team to characterize performance of low-voltage electrical (LVE) systems in Rivian vehicles, with the aim to drive hardware architecture decision-making in early development stages, and to validate system designs in later stages of the development cycle. This is a hardware architecture role that requires a familiarity with systems software necessary to identify, and quantify system-level performance metrics, anticipate key design risks, and validate system architecture performance against requirements. This role spans the characterization of computational, network, sensor, and power related performance dimensions of various LVE subsystems, including infotainment, telematics, wireless connectivity, networking, passive entry, camera monitoring systems, and more.

Requirements

Advanced degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering or a related field, and a track record of 7+ years of hands-on experience in relevant practical settings.
Experience designing and/or validating embedded systems optimized for distributed architecture settings, including automotive, aerospace, or other architecturally similar applications.
Strong understanding of embedded computing platforms, and the methods for quantifying performance of their processors, memory / storage systems, and peripheral interfaces.
Conversant with software platforms for embedded computing architectures typical in automotive applications like infotainment, wireless connectivity, telematics, or ADAS, ranging from OS to RTOS to bare-metal, and respective performance measurement methodologies.
Solid grasp of the power related aspects of distributed embedded architectures, with focus on efficient low-power states, wake propagation and sequencing.
Some familiarity with camera sensors, and/or downstream processing pipelines, including their data formats, ISPs, DSPs, and how to characterize key performance aspects.
Deep understanding of on- and off-board high-speed automotive interfaces and networks, such as PCIe, GMSL, FPD-Link, Ethernet, A2B, USB, CAN-FD, and how to characterize their utilization and performance.
Hands-on coding experience related to some combination of embedded platform bring-up, system software / applications development, or system-level hardware performance instrumentation, and related test automation / scripting.
Conversant with wireless technologies like BLE, LTE, 5G, and/or Wi-Fi, and their performance evaluation at the protocol and systems integration levels.
Talent for working from first principles to develop software for modeling, data acquisition, mining, analysis, and presentation in using appropriate tools, e.g. Python, MatLab.
Innate curiosity to figure out how systems work by decomposing them through the application of fundamental principles, an ability to translate this into measurable metrics, and a drive to leverage these methods to optimize design.

Responsibilities

Drive the collaboration between hardware architecture, hardware design and software application teams to create comprehensive characterization plans that surface key performance metrics, provide insight into system bottlenecks and chokepoints, reveal over-/under-design scenarios, and validate system performance relative to system requirements.
Work cross-functionally to factor high-level functional and performance requirements into their respective sub-systems, distill them into clear system architecture performance requirements capable of validation, and evolve these requirements into future architecture.
Lead and support the design, integration and automation efforts related to characterization and validation activities on various hardware testing configurations, including early prototypes boards, bench-top sub-system mock-ups, lab cars, mules, and other HIL infrastructure.
Orchestrate the end-to-end development of systems and automation for performance characterization ranging from development of requirements to identification of solutions and their implementation, including integration of h/w and s/w, establishment of control and data acquisition pipelines, and development of downstream data processing infrastructure.
Execute characterization plans, leverage analytical methods, and present clear validation metrics and reports that support data-driven architectural decisions, and validate the resulting designs.
Contribute to mock-ups or prototypes to study next-gen technologies, establish proofs-of-concept, and/or serve as reference platforms for future bring up, system integration, system-level validation, or future architecture inclusion.

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