Staff Software Engineer - Multimedia (Video Pipeline)

Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies•Palo Alto, CA

1d•$186,000 - $255,750•Hybrid

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. We are seeking a highly skilled Staff Software Engineer to join our team, focusing exclusively on the architecture and advancement of our in-vehicle video pipeline. You will own the end-to-end path from camera sensors and ISP through capture, encoding, streaming, recording, and display, setting the technical direction for how video is acquired, processed, and delivered across the platform. The ideal candidate has deep expertise in C++ and a proven track record of designing and optimizing low-latency, high-throughput multimedia systems on embedded heterogeneous hardware. This role primarily focuses on embedded systems development for high-performance applications and carries technical leadership responsibility across multiple teams. This is a hybrid role based out of our Palo, Alto, CA office.

Requirements

Expert proficiency in modern C++ (C++17 or later) on Linux/embedded systems; strong multithreading and real-time systems skills.
Extensive hands-on experience building production video pipelines, including camera capture (V4L2/libcamera), ISP tuning integration, hardware codecs (H.264/H.265/AV1), and streaming protocols (RTSP/RTP/WebRTC).
Deep experience with GStreamer (including custom plugin/element development) and/or FFmpeg, and with Linux graphics/memory primitives (DMA-BUF, DRM/KMS, Wayland, EGL).
Demonstrated experience implementing and optimizing media workloads on embedded heterogeneous hardware (CPU, GPU, VPU, ISP, DSP), including zero-copy data paths and power/thermal-aware design.
Experience leading architecture for complex multimedia systems, mentoring engineers, and influencing roadmaps across teams.
Strong understanding of algorithms, data structures, software architecture, and video fundamentals (color spaces, chroma subsampling, rate control, GOP structure, timestamps/synchronization).
Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, with 10+ years of relevant experience.

Nice To Haves

Experience with automotive camera systems (GMSL/FPD-Link, surround view, dashcam/sentry recording)
Functional-safety or security requirements for video
Computer vision/AI integration (OpenCV, on-device inference)
Visual computing/parallel programming frameworks (OpenCL, OpenGL ES, Vulkan)

Responsibilities

Define and own the architecture of the camera-to-display video pipeline, including capture, ISP integration, color conversion, scaling, encoding/decoding, streaming, recording, and rendering, with minimal latency and high power efficiency.
Design, develop, implement and integrate hardware-accelerated video encode/decode (H.264/H.265/AV1) and streaming/recording features (RTSP, RTP, WebRTC, MP4/MKV containers), ensuring robustness and scalability.
Analyze and optimize video pipelines for real-time performance and glass-to-glass latency across CPU, GPU, VPU/hardware codecs, ISP, and DSP, using zero-copy buffer sharing (DMA-BUF, GBM) and efficient memory management.
Build and maintain the multimedia stack on frameworks such as GStreamer, V4L2, libcamera, FFmpeg, and vendor SDKs, and integrate it with the OS, display server, and downstream consumers (CV/AI, HMI, telematics).
Set standards, review designs and code, mentor engineers, and drive cross-team alignment on video interfaces, buffer formats, and quality/latency targets.
Work closely with product, hardware, camera/ISP, perception, and platform teams to bring new camera and video features into the final product.
Establish video quality metrics (PSNR/SSIM/VMAF), latency measurement, and telemetry/tracing to detect and resolve frame drops, tearing, A/V sync, and stability issues in production.
Rapidly prototype and iterate on new pipeline designs and codec configurations to solve challenging latency, bandwidth, and image-quality problems.