Sr. Staff Systems Engineer Autonomy

Rivian•Palo Alto, CA

2d•Onsite

About The Position

Your mission is to define, validate, and maintain a coherent system architecture that balances high-performance compute requirements with the rigorous safety and redundancy standards of autonomous driving. This is a high-impact, individual contributor role for a seasoned expert who has previously steered the architectural direction of large-scale autonomous vehicle (AV) programs.

Requirements

Advanced degree (Master’s or Ph.D.) in Computer Science, Robotics, Systems Engineering or a related technical field .
10+ years (Master’s)/8+ years (Ph.Ds) of experience in systems engineering or software development in autonomous driving or robotics industry, preferably in leading the architecture of a complex system-of-systems from initial concept through production or large-scale deployment.
Expertise in ML-driven autonomous vehicle stacks, coupled with a forward-looking grasp of state-of-the-art architectures, methodologies, and emerging technologies in the AV space.
Extensive knowledge of sensor modalities (LiDAR, radar, high-res cameras, GNSS, IMU) and how to manage their data pipelines.
Experience of selecting and optimizing edge-compute platforms while managing power and thermal constraints
Familiarity with functional safety standards (ISO 26262) and SOTIF (ISO 21448).
Excellent team player with strong communication and presentation skills.

Responsibilities

Synthesize architectures and requirements from the Sensing, Compute, and Actuation into a unified autonomy architecture and set of requirements for the hardware and vehicle platform teams.
Lead trade-off studies to resolve conflicting requirements and providing data-driven recommendations to the leadership
Lead the Fail-Operational strategy for different failure modes or degradations within the autonomy sensing, compute and actuation to execute a minimum risk maneuver.
Identify functional/performance gaps in current architectures. Lead stakeholder engagement to devise and implement mitigations that resolve bottlenecks.
Coordinate with cross-functional teams to ensure infrastructure systems—including Low-Voltage Power Distribution, Connectivity, and Thermal Management (Coolant Flow)—are appropriately sized and redundant to meet autonomy demands during nominal and fail-operational scenarios.
Maintain a "big picture" view to ensure architectural coherence. Identify opportunities to standardize interfaces and modules across various hardware versions and vehicle platforms to reduce complexity and engineering overhead.
Maintain a rigorous, systematic record of architectural diagrams, interface documents, and design assumptions to ensure long-term maintainability and traceability for audits.
Serve as the primary representative for the Autonomy team in vehicle-level architectural design reviews.
Drive cross-functional consensus among software and hardware engineering, regulatory compliance, and executive leadership regarding the technical architecture and strategic roadmap.