Sr. Staff Systems Engineer Autonomy

Rivian•Palo Alto, PA

18h

About The Position

The Sr. Staff Systems Engineer Autonomy will define, mature, and own requirements for Rivian’s remote assistance platform, a key component of the autonomy stack that helps keep fully autonomous vehicles operational while the company develops capabilities for long-tail driving edge cases. The engineer will author and maintain authoritative specifications for the software infrastructure implementation team, define acceptance criteria and verification strategies, and create test specifications for device-, bench-, and HIL-level validation. The role also involves building automated verification capabilities, serving as the primary technical interface between systems engineering and software infrastructure for remote assistance, collaborating with hardware engineering on platform KPIs and topology, and reviewing platform software designs.

Requirements

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, software engineering, computer science, or a related field.
10 or more years of experience in embedded systems, automotive software platforms, or autonomous vehicle compute systems.
Experience with telemetry pipeline development.
Experience with Linux-based systems.
Familiarity with secure communications design or automotive cybersecurity practices.
Familiarity with functional safety development processes, including ISO 26262.
Experience writing system or software architecture documents, requirements specifications, and interface definitions.
Proficiency in Python for tooling, automation, and data analysis.
Demonstrated ability to work cross-functionally with implementation teams and translate architecture into actionable specifications.
Experience with requirements management tools such as DOORS, Polarion, Jama, or similar.
Prior work at an OEM, Tier 1, or autonomy technology company.

Responsibilities

Define, mature, and own requirements for vehicle authority and validation of remote assistance advisory input.
Define escalation trigger logic for situations in which a vehicle needs assistance, such as finding a compliant path.
Define the taxonomy of advisory input that remote operators can provide to vehicles.
Define input freshness and limits on the validity of advisory input.
Define situational data sufficiency, including the information vehicles provide to remote operators and its validity.
Define degraded behavior for imperfect network connectivity.
Define link integrity and security requirements, including authentication of information and commands transmitted between vehicles and operators.
Define requirements for evidentiary logging and the onboard/offboard interface boundary.
Translate policy- and legal-defined authority boundaries for law enforcement and first responder interactions into system requirements, coordinating with exterior communication systems.
Author and maintain specifications as the authoritative source of truth for the software infrastructure implementation team.
Define acceptance criteria and verification strategies.
Author test specifications for device-, bench-, or HIL-level verification and validation of pertinent pipelines.
Work with the team to build automated verification capabilities for platform-level requirements.
Serve as the primary technical interface between systems engineering and software infrastructure teams for remote assistance topics.
Collaborate with hardware engineering on functional and performance KPI definition, resource allocation, and platform topology decisions.
Participate in platform software design reviews and provide architectural feedback grounded in owned specifications.