Manager Quality Engineering

Role Summary

The Manager of Perceived Quality owns the customer-facing execution of vehicle look, feel, and sound, ensuring the end-to-end experience aligns with Rivian's brand promise from initial design concept through full-scale production.

Acting as the ultimate voice of the customer, this role translates subjective impressions into quantifiable engineering specifications and leads a high-performing team to maintain rigorous quality standards across all vehicle programs.

The position collaborates extensively with Design, Engineering, Advanced Manufacturing, Supplier Quality, Purchasing, and Operations, providing cross-functional alignment and regular reporting to executive leadership

Responsibilities

Standards and targets:

• Set Perceived Quality targets for crafted quality and material quality, aligned to the Perceived Quality attribute requirements and the brand.
• Benchmark competitor vehicles to find best-in-class examples and solutions, and use them to set Bill of Design criteria.
• Review Bill of Design and design sketch documents to build craftsmanship in from the start.
• Publish a cosmetic quality standard for each vehicle program, covering areas such as seating, steering wheel, door trim, instrument panel and console.
• Own a master deck of specifications for every visible part interface, and give targets to Studio, Engineering and suppliers.

Program delivery:

• Lead interface maturation and deliver proven interface characteristics into program master sections.
• Run virtual cosmetic risk assessments in CAD, with dimensional variation analysis, to predict issues before hardware exists.
• Work with Engineering and Advanced Manufacturing to confirm that designs are feasible to build at quality.
• Mature components and assemblies with Component Engineers, suppliers, Design, Company Quality and Purchasing.
• Turn requirements into a detailed build standard and hand it to production teams.

Reviews and issue closure:

• Lead craftsmanship review meetings by vehicle zone, and escalate issues that cannot be closed in the room.
• Lead issue discovery and resolution on prototype builds, and support launch milestones.
• Track performance against targets with metrics and data visualization, and report status and risk to leadership.

Leadership:

• Hire, coach and develop a team of Perceived Quality engineers, and plan resources and Rivian Internalbudget.
• Act as the subject matter expert and the escalation route for Perceived Quality across

programs.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in engineering or a technical discipline.
• 5-7+ years in Craftsmanship or Perceived Quality at a global automaker
• 3+ years experience leading people or cross-functional teams.
• Deep knowledge of vehicle appearance and feel: fit and finish, gap and flush, surface quality, paint, interior and exterior materials, haptics and closing quality.
• Working knowledge of tolerance stack analysis and GD&T, and proficiency in CATIA or similar CAD.
• Strong statistical awareness and a clear view of what high quality looks like.
• Strong understanding of how materials affect craftsmanship and perceived quality.
• Experience in a manufacturing or production environment.

Preferred

• Master's degree.
• Experience writing cosmetic or craftsmanship standards and running competitive
  benchmarking.
• Experience with statistical qualification of equipment and gauges.
• Experience with vehicle launches, ideally at an EV maker or a fast-growing company.

Pay Disclosure

The salary range for this role is $137,800 - $182,520 for California based applicants. This is the lowest to highest salary we in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. An employee's position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to, specific competencies, relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, shift, and organizational needs.

The successful candidate may be eligible for annual performance bonus and equity awards.

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits for full-time and part-time employees, their spouse or domestic partner, and children up to age 26, including but not limited to paid vacation, paid sick leave, and a competitive portfolio of insurance benefits including life, medical, dental, vision, short-term disability insurance, and long-term disability insurance to eligible employees. You may also have the opportunity to participate in Rivian's 401(k) Plan and Employee Stock Purchase Program if you meet certain eligibility requirements. Full-time employee coverage is effective on their first day of employment. Part-time employee coverage is effective the first of the month following 90 days of employment. More information about benefits is available at rivianbenefits.com.