Lead AI Tooling Architect & Manager

Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 320,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus program

RSUs equity

Health coverage

Retirement savings

Time off

Family planning programs

Job summary

Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies seeks a senior AI tools leader to architect and deploy reusable AI tooling across domains. You will stay close to code, balancing architecture, reviews and hands-on building while guiding engineers brand-wide. The role emphasizes scalable tooling, open vs.

proprietary model support, and secure, observable systems. You will influence architecture standards, mentor a small team, and collaborate with DevEx, IT, and domain teams to shape AI-native development

Qualifications

• 8+ years in software engineering, including production systems in enterprise environments.
• 2+ years leading engineers as a tech lead or engineering manager.
• Hands-on experience building and operating AI-native developer tools, internal platforms, or CI/CD systems in production.
• Hands-on experience with language models and agents, including tool use, context management, and evaluation in production.

Responsibilities

• Set the direction for reusable AI tooling, from agent runtimes and evaluation to skills, plugins, and agentic loops, and own the roadmap that gets it into engineers’ hands.
• Build AI tooling that works with any model, open-source or proprietary, so teams can switch as the model landscape evolves without rebuilding their workflows.
• Put AI to work across the development lifecycle, from code review and testing to triage, alongside engineering leaders in every domain.
• Lead design reviews and build prioritized AI services and developer tools yourself, owning their reliability, observability, and cost.
• Connect the dots across engineering groups: spot shared patterns, reuse components, and stop duplicate work before it starts.
• Set the bar for evaluation, guardrails, and monitoring, measuring quality, safety, and developer impact across open-source and proprietary models.

Skills

Software engineering

Team leadership

Communication

Security awareness

Education

BS or MS in Computer Science

Tools

CI/CD

AI tooling

Security tooling

Cloud platforms

Job description

Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies seeks a senior AI tools leader to architect and deploy reusable AI tooling across domains. You will stay close to code, balancing architecture, reviews and hands-on building while guiding engineers brand-wide. The role emphasizes scalable tooling, open vs.

proprietary model support, and secure, observable systems. You will influence architecture standards, mentor a small team, and collaborate with DevEx, IT, and domain teams to shape AI-native development