Automotive ECU Reliability Engineer — Data-Driven AI

Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job description

About Us

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.

Role Summary

As a Sustaining Reliability Engineer focused on Automotive Electronics, you will own the reliability

of Electronic Control Units (ECUs) across mass-production to the hands of customers. You will combine deep electronics reliability expertise with modern big data tooling (Databricks, Python, SQL, HEX) to build the systems that detect, model, and predict failures before they reach the field. This is a high-impact, cross-functional role at the intersection of hardware reliability engineering and data engineering.

Responsibilities

• Research and strategically implement vehicle, component, module, and system reliability testing to provide early detection of reliability issues during mass production through ongoing reliability testing, manufacturing validation testing, HASS testing, and Burn In testing

• Collaborate with quality, manufacturing, design, and process engineering to improve reliability outcomes; cascade reliability risks from design DFMEA to process PFMEA and control plans.

• Assess manufacturing changes and risks; develop test plans to validate them and own escalation and root-cause analysis for identified failures.

• Build and maintain automated data pipelines in Databricks to extract, transform, and load ECU fault signals, environmental stress telemetry (temperature, memory usage) into analysis-ready datasets.

• Develop and deploy real-time reliability modeling to surface current fleet risk exposure, predict impending ECU failures, and track trends across comparable vehicle populations.

• Build and maintain stakeholder-facing dashboards that integrate reliability model outputs, Jira tickets, and ECU test results (Validation, ESS, ORT) for rapid insight and decision support.

• Partner with an AI integration platform (e.g., Google Agent, Cursor) to accelerate ECU fault diagnosis, root-cause analysis workflows, and empirical grounding of future reliability requirements.

• Maintain closed-loop integration between field reliability data and the New Product Introduction (NPI) reliability teams to ensure field issues are captured and actioned.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• 5–10 years of industry experience in a reliability engineering role, preferably in automotive electronics or embedded systems.

• Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Systems Engineering, or a related discipline; advanced degree a plus.

• Hands-on experience with electronics reliability disciplines: physics of failure, failure mode analysis, fatigue/degradation mechanisms in PCBAs and ECUs.

• Knowledge of reliability statistics including Weibull analysis, accelerated life testing models (Arrhenius, Coffin-Manson, inverse power law), and reliability growth modeling.

• Expert understanding and demonstrated application of root-cause analysis techniques (8D, Ishikawa, fault tree analysis).

• Experience establishing reliability requirements, test programs, and deploying reliability testing guidelines for Ongoing Reliability Testing (ORT) and Highly Accelerated Stress Screening (HASS).

• Proficiency in SQL and Python for data manipulation, statistical analysis, and pipeline development; experience with big-data platforms such as Databricks, Spark, or equivalent.

• Experience with dashboard development tools (HEX, Tableau, Power BI, or similar) for visualization and stakeholder reporting.

• Experience integrating or prompting AI/LLM tools for engineering workflows (fault diagnosis, requirement generation).

Total Rewards

We build the exceptional — and we believe the people doing that work should be rewarded accordingly. In addition to a competitive base salary, full-time positions may be is eligible to participate in our annual company performance bonus program.

Payments are discretionary and not guaranteed; actual amounts depend on company results and the terms of the plan in effect, and require active employment at the time of payout. This role is also eligible for equity in the form of Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), subject to board approval and the terms of our equity incentive plans, including applicable vesting requirements.

In addition to our compensation programs, we invest in our people with a comprehensive benefits package designed to support the health, wellbeing, and financial future for full-time employees — including health coverage, retirement savings, time off, and family planning programs. Offerings vary by country. Learn more about our global benefit programs.

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.

Equal Opportunity

Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information or characteristics, physical or mental disability, marital/domestic partner status, age, military/veteran status, medical condition, or any other characteristic protected by law. We are also committed to ensuring compliance with all applicable fair employment practice laws regarding citizenship and immigration status.

Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies is committed to ensuring that our hiring process is accessible for persons with disabilities. If you have a disability or limitation, such as those covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act, that requires accommodations to assist you in the search and application process, please email us at [e-mail].

Candidate Data Privacy

Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies” may collect, use and disclose your personal information or personal data (within the meaning of the applicable data protection laws) when you apply for employment and/or participate in our recruitment processes (“Candidate Personal Data”). This data includes contact, demographic, communications, educational, professional, employment, social media/website, network/device, recruiting system usage/interaction, security and preference information. Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies may use your Candidate Personal Data for the purposes of (i) tracking interactions with our recruiting system; (ii) carrying out, analyzing and improving our application and recruitment process, including assessing you and your application and conducting employment, background and reference checks; (iii) establishing an employment relationship or entering into an employment contract with you; (iv) complying with our legal, regulatory and corporate governance obligations; (v) record keeping; (vi) ensuring network and information security and preventing fraud; and (vii) as otherwise required or permitted by applicable law.

Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies may share your Candidate Personal Data with (i) internal personnel who have a need to know such information in order to perform their duties, including individuals on our People Team, Finance, Legal, and the team(s) with the position(s) for which you are applying; (ii) Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies affiliates; and (iii) Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies’ service providers, including providers of background checks, staffing services, and cloud services.

Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies may transfer or store internationally your Candidate Personal Data, including to or in the United States, Canada, and the European Union and in the cloud, and this data may be subject to the laws and accessible to the courts, law enforcement and national security authorities of such jurisdictions.

If you provide a mobile telephone number as part of your application or during the recruitment process, Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies may use that number to contact you via SMS text message for recruitment-related purposes, including scheduling, logistics, and status updates. Message and data rates may apply. You may opt out of SMS communications at any time by replying STOP to any text message you receive from us. Consent to receive SMS messages is not a condition of applying for or being considered for employment.

Please see our Candidate Data Privacy Notice (English)and Candidate Data Privacy Notice (Serbian) for more information.

--

Please note this job posting represents an open, active vacancy. Additionally, we are not currently accepting applications from third party application services.