Role Summary

About the Team
The Connectivity & Telematics team is the central nervous system between Rivian vehicles and the cloud - responsible for real-time vehicle-to-cloud communication, remote command execution, telemetry pipelines, and system-level diagnostics across a fleet of 100,000+ vehicles. We sit at a rare intersection: close enough to the hardware to debug kernel behavior, and close enough to the cloud to trace a failure end-to-end.

Role
The Connectivity & Telematics team is the central nervous system between Rivian vehicles and the cloud - responsible for real-time vehicle-to-cloud communication, remote command execution, telemetry pipelines, and system-level diagnostics across a fleet of 100,000+ vehicles. We sit at a rare intersection: close enough to the hardware to debug kernel behavior, and close enough to the cloud to trace a failure end-to-end.

This role is fundamentally about investigation. You'll work on some of the most complex, cross-cutting problems on the platform - the kind that don't live cleanly in one layer or one discipline's mental model. A single investigation might span embedded Linux behavior, networking internals, firmware interfaces, and cloud-connected services before the full picture comes together. Investigation here runs in both directions: reactive root cause when something breaks in the field, and proactive interrogation of fleet data to catch regressions before a release ships.

What makes this role distinct is that investigation happens at fleet scale. The strongest work pairs systems understanding with data: querying fleet-wide telemetry to find a pattern and quantify its impact, then dropping down to device logs and on-vehicle testing to explain it. The best investigations don't end at a root cause - they end with what you learned encoded into automated detection, so the fleet flags the next one on its own. We're looking for an engineer with strong software and systems fundamentals who either brings - or is motivated to build - the data analysis skills (SQL, PySpark) to reason about the fleet as a whole.

Responsibilities

• Investigate and root-cause cross-stack issues spanning embedded Linux, networking, firmware interfaces, and cloud-connected services on production vehicles
• Analyze fleet telemetry and logs (SQL, PySpark, Databricks) to detect emerging issues, quantify scope and impact, and validate that fixes hold up in the field
• Gate software releases with fleet data: define health criteria, monitor rollouts, and inform go/no-go decisions for software shipping to 100,000+ vehicles
• Build and maintain automated telemetry monitoring, dashboards, and alerting that surface fleet-level health patterns and catch regressions early
• Drive data-driven root cause analysis end-to-end: form hypotheses, design controlled experiments, collect evidence, and document findings
• Perform on-vehicle testing and diagnostic work to reproduce and validate behavior
• Partner with firmware, platform, cloud, and vendor teams to trace issues across system boundaries and land durable fixes
• Communicate findings in clear written investigation summaries accessible to both technical and non-technical stakeholders

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field - or equivalent practical experience
• 2+ years of experience building, debugging, or operating software systems
• Strong programming ability in Python and/or C/C++, including the ability to read, understand, and debug complex embedded code that you didn't write
• Working knowledge of Linux (processes and services, networking fundamentals, logs) and a demonstrated ability to learn how large, multi-layer systems interact
• Experience with - or clear aptitude and strong willingness to learn - SQL and PySpark for large-scale data analysis
• Strong analytical reasoning and written communication skills

Minimum Qualifications:

• Hands-on experience analyzing large-scale telemetry or log data with PySpark, Databricks, SQL, or Python/pandas
• Experience with embedded Linux internals: kernel, drivers, networking stack, and how userspace interacts with hardware
• Experience with Linux system debugging and network analysis tools: perf, ftrace, strace, tcpdump, Wireshark/PCAP
• Familiarity with vehicle networking and connectivity protocols: CAN, Automotive Ethernet, LTE/cellular modem management
• Familiarity with hardware diagnostic tools such as CANalyzer or oscilloscopes for ECU communication analysis
• Experience building dashboards, monitoring, or alerting for production system or fleet health
• Comfort writing automation or analysis scripts to accelerate investigation workflows
• Prior work in automotive, robotics, IoT, or connected hardware products

Total Rewards

Full-time positions include base salary, eligibility for an annual performance bonus, and eligibility for equity.

In addition to base salary, Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies offers benefits tailored to the local market. For more information on the benefits available for full-time employees, check out our Global Benefits Site.

External candidates can apply for this role through the Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies careers site (https://rivianvw.tech/#careers). If you are a current employee, please apply through our internal job board.