Staff Vehicle Architecture Engineer

Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies • Irvine, CA

3d • $171,100 - $235,300

About The Position

Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies is a joint venture addressing electric-vehicle challenges through technology for software-defined vehicles. The Vehicle System Architecture team owns vehicle-level mechatronic architecture and translates product intent from Brand Product Definition, Program, Cost Engineering, Manufacturing, Strategy and Reliability into parts and function distribution across the vehicle, from concept through manufacturing.

The Staff Vehicle Architecture Engineer will build and maintain parametric models that inform vehicle architecture decisions, including controller count and placement, functional allocation, sensor and actuator distribution, and harness topology. The role conducts quantified trade studies and develops cost and bill-of-materials models to compare architecture options and identify opportunities to remove unnecessary controllers, harness runs and sensors.

The position also applies AI to engineering architecture work by creating LLM and agentic pipelines, semantic search, and toolchain integrations with human-in-the-loop safeguards. The engineer contributes to vehicle-level systems and safety analyses, design reviews, model correlation with vehicle, laboratory and supplier data, and documentation of methods as reusable playbooks.

Requirements

• BS/MS in Electrical, Computer, Mechanical, Systems, or Aerospace Engineering, or equivalent demonstrated experience.
• At least 5 years of experience in vehicle, aerospace, or electromechanical systems engineering, or an equivalent record of building analyses that informed real designs.
• Strong Python skills in data processing, parametric modelling, automation, and prototyping AI workflows.
• Practical experience building LLM applications, such as RAG pipelines, semantic search, structured extraction, or agent frameworks.
• Ability to decompose a vehicle into subsystems, functions, and interfaces and reason about how changes propagate.
• Comfort working with and defending consequential quantitative analyses, including cost, mass, and power budgets.

Nice To Haves

• E/E architecture background, including zonal and secondary ECUs, LV power distribution, networks, harness design, CAN/Ethernet, and DBC/ARXML.
• Experience with physical simulation tools such as OpenModelica, Julia, Spice, Modelica, or FMI/FMU co-simulation.
• Worst-case, tolerance, and statistical analysis experience (WCCA, Monte Carlo, DOE) applied to real designs.
• Hands-on physical-systems projects, such as vehicle dynamics, powertrain, robotics, Formula SAE, Baja SAE, or solar car.
• Manufacturing or DFM exposure and familiarity with the effects of architecture decisions on the production line.
• GitLab CI/CD experience.
• An AI portfolio applying LLMs or ML to engineering artifacts; academic or personal projects count.
• STPA, DFMEA, or fault tree analysis knowledge.

Responsibilities

• Build and own parametric models for vehicle architecture decisions, including controller count and placement, functional allocation across zonal and secondary ECUs, sensor and actuator distribution, and harness topology.
• Conduct architecture trade studies with quantified outcomes for cost, mass, harness complexity, power, temperature and environmental factors, reliability, and manufacturability; provide models, parameters, and sensitivity analyses.
• Build cost and bill-of-materials models to compare architecture options.
• Use models to identify controllers, harness runs, and sensors that can be removed from the vehicle.
• Analyze integration of new technologies using a software-hardware platform design approach.
• Build LLM and agentic pipelines to extract device and interface data from specifications, generate and check candidate architecture configurations, and identify gaps across requirements, device lists, and interface definitions.
• Deploy semantic search over requirements, architecture models, device data, and prior trade studies.
• Integrate AI assistance into the team's toolchain, including Flow Engineering, Airtable, and GitLab, through APIs and CI pipelines with human-in-the-loop guardrails.
• Build analytics connecting architecture decisions to downstream field issues, manufacturing escapes, and cost variance.
• Contribute to vehicle-level STPA, DFMEA, and fault analyses, and feed findings back into the architecture and its models.
• Participate in architecture, interface, and safety design reviews across domains.
• Correlate models against real vehicle, laboratory rig, and supplier data.
• Document methods as playbooks that other engineers can run.

Benefits

• Competitive base salary.
• Eligibility for an annual company performance bonus program for full-time positions; payments are discretionary and not guaranteed.
• Eligibility for equity in the form of Restricted Stock Units, subject to board approval and applicable plan terms and vesting requirements.
• Comprehensive benefits package for full-time employees, including health coverage, retirement savings, time off, and family planning programs; offerings vary by country.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior