Staff DevOps Software Engineer- Firmware & CI/CD

Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies•Vancouver, BC

1d•CA$137,300 - CA$171,600

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. Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies Canada is proud to be a Great Place To Work® Certified company — 92% of employees at RV Tech Canada say it is a great place to work, compared to 60% at a typical company. The Build & Release team is the backbone of our software development lifecycle. We don't just "run operations" — we engineer the mechanisms that create software for our vehicles. Our mission is to provide a seamless, high-performance developer experience where pipelines are invisible, and deployments are stable. As a Staff Engineer, you will set the technical direction for build and release engineering across the org, solving our hardest infrastructure problems and multiplying the effectiveness of the teams around you.

Requirements

8+ years of industry experience as a DevOps/Build & Release Engineer or similar, including demonstrated technical leadership on multi-team or org-wide initiatives.
BS or MS in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
Deep expertise designing and scaling CI/CD systems (GitLab-CI, GitHub Actions, CircleCI, Buildkite) and Infrastructure-as-Code tooling (Terraform, Helm, Ansible) at an architectural level.
3+ years of hands-on experience with build tools like Bazel, GNU Make, CMake, Gradle, including experience architecting or migrating build systems at scale.
Advanced scripting and automation expertise in Python, Go, Bash, or similar, with a track record of building tools/platforms used by many engineers.
Deep, hands-on expertise with Kubernetes, Docker, and cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure), including platform-level design decisions.
Expert-level experience designing observability strategy using tools like DataDog, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, or ELK Stack.
You treat "Operations" as a first-class engineering discipline and have a track record of driving org-wide improvements to Developer Experience.
Proven ability to lead without direct authority — setting technical direction, influencing roadmaps, and raising the bar for engineering practices across teams.
Deep curiosity about the unique challenges of delivering software to hardware/vehicles, with the judgment to make tradeoffs in ambiguous, high-stakes environments.
Excellent communication skills, with experience presenting technical strategy to senior stakeholders and building consensus across engineering orgs.

Responsibilities

Define the technical strategy and architecture for scalable, fault-tolerant CI/CD pipelines spanning multiple teams and product lines.
Own and evolve the technical vision for build system integrity, setting standards that other engineers and teams are held to.
Lead the evaluation, onboarding, and architectural integration of new components, software stacks, and build technologies org-wide.
Drive build-vs-buy decisions on third-party and open-source software, setting integration patterns others follow.
Identify systemic gaps in developer productivity and lead the design and delivery of tools that improve the experience for the entire engineering org.
Act as a technical authority across development, QA, and release management, resolving cross-team design tradeoffs and influencing how other teams plan releases.
Partner directly with senior cross-functional stakeholders to translate ambiguous business needs into engineering roadmaps, often defining the requirements themselves.
Set the standard for production system reliability — establishing monitoring, incident response, and performance practices that other engineers adopt.
Architect containerization and orchestration strategy (Docker, Kubernetes) at a platform level, making build-vs-reuse decisions that affect multiple teams.
Serve as a key technical bridge between software development and vehicle deployment, mentoring engineers and raising the technical bar across the build automation domain.
Mentor senior and mid-level engineers, and contribute to hiring, technical interviewing, and team-level technical decision-making.