Senior Technical Program Manager, Field Quality & Reliability – New Programs

Rivian; Tustin (CA); On-site; USD 122,000 - 152,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Paid vacation

Paid sick leave

Health insurance

401(k) plan

Employee Stock Purchase Program

Job summary

Rivian seeks a Senior Technical Program Manager, Field Quality & Reliability in California to join the R2 program. You will connect field issues to cross-functional resolution, driving containment, root cause analysis, and permanent corrective actions across engineering, manufacturing, service, and software teams.

You will coordinate failure analyses, manage VIP escalations, and lead cross-functional reviews to close gaps in procedures and documentation.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering or a related technical field.
• Typically 5+ years (Senior) or 8+ years (Staff) in automotive or complex electro-mechanical products.
• Experience in quality, field/service engineering, launch quality, or technical program management.
• Experience driving cross-functional issue resolution using structured problem-solving frameworks (8D, Six Sigma, RC/CA, A3, TPS).
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills with senior stakeholders.
• Strong knowledge of vehicle quality systems and processes (pre-delivery, containment, supplier quality, failure analysis).
• Proficiency with Jira, Confluence, Slack; ability to read dashboards and prioritize data.
• Ability to operate with limited supervision in a fast-paced launch environment.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end follow-up on field-reported issues through closure, including containment and verification.
• Drive accountability across engineering, manufacturing, supplier, service, and software teams.
• Coordinate failure analysis, ensuring findings feed into corrective actions.
• Manage high-touch and VIP customer escalations and cross-functional communications.
• Lead cross-functional deep-dives on active quality issues and containment strategies.
• Track aging metrics and escalate aging service requests with urgency.
• Feed field findings back into pre-delivery checks, careline inspections, and service manuals.
• Partner with reliability teams to prioritize issues and focus analytics resources.

Skills

Cross-functional collaboration

Project management

Quality engineering

Root cause analysis

Jira/Confluence/Slack

Education

Engineering degree

Tools

Jira

Confluence

Slack

Job description

About Us

Rivianis on a mission to keep the world adventurous forever. This goes for the emissions-free Electric Adventure Vehicles we build, and the curious, courageous souls we seek to attract.

As a company, we constantly challenge what’s possible, never simply accepting what has always been done. We reframe old problems, seek new solutions and operate comfortably in areas that are unknown. Our backgrounds are diverse, but our team shares a love of the outdoors and a desire to protect it for future generations.

Role Summary

Field Quality & Reliability at Rivian ensures that every issue our customers experience in the field is captured, understood, escalated, root caused, contained, driven to permanent closure, and prevented for future production builds. We sit at the intersection of service, engineering, manufacturing, software, supplier, and program teams, transforming daily field signals — service requests, pre-delivery findings, time series telemetry, and social escalations — into corrective actions that improve our vehicles and protect the customer experience, and Rivian brand image.

As a Senior Technical Program Manager, Field Quality & Reliability, you will be the connective tissue between field issue identification and cross-functional resolution for the R2 program. Where our data pipelines and triage forums surface emerging issues, you will own what happens next: driving root cause / corrective action accountability, chasing containment and clean points, coordinating failure analysis, and ensuring no issue goes stale. This is a highly people-oriented role — success is measured by your ability to build relationships across dozens of teams, hold owners accountable with empathy and urgency, and relentlessly close the loop.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end follow-up on field-reported issues from daily Field Action Center triage through issue closure, including containment status, temporary and permanent correction action dates, clean point verification, and prevent-recurrence.
• Drive accountability across issue owners in engineering, manufacturing, supplier development, service, and software teams — ensuring every issue has clear action items, responsible parties, and dates, and escalating stale or uncontained issues to leadership.
• Coordinate failure analysis logistics: ensure failed parts are extracted, shipped to failure analysis labs or supplier locations, analyzed, and findings fed back into issue resolution and supplier corrective actions.
• Manage high-touch and VIP customer escalations (social media, executive, tow events), coordinating service centers, engineering, parts expediting, and communications approval chains through resolution.
• Lead cross-functional working sessions and deep dives on active quality issues, driving alignment on containment strategies, repair procedures, service documentation gaps, and factory inspection additions.
• Track and report issue aging metrics — open work orders, parts aging, days-in-service, key-to-key — and partner with service operations to systematically **escalate** aging service requests.
• Ensure field findings are fed back into pre-delivery checklists, factory quality alerts, careline inspections, service manuals, and D/PFMEAs to prevent recurrence.
• Partner with the field data and reliability engineering team on issue prioritization, freeing analytics resources to focus on detection while you own resolution.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering or a related technical field.
• Typically 5+ years (Senior) or 8+ years (Staff) of experience in automotive or complex electro-mechanical products, including significant experience in quality, field/service engineering, launch quality, or technical program management roles.
• Demonstrated experience driving cross-functional issue resolution — 8D, Six Sigma,RC/CA, A3, Toyota Production System, or similar structured problem-solving frameworks — from identification through verified closure.
• Exceptional interpersonal and communication skills: you build trust quickly, run effective meetings, write crisp summaries, and are comfortable holding senior stakeholders accountable.
• Strong working knowledge of vehicle quality systems and processes: pre-delivery, containment actions, clean points, supplier quality, failure analysis, and service operations.
• Fluency with tools such as Jira, Confluence, Slack, and service/warranty data systems; comfort reading dashboards and data to prioritize (dashboard development not required — we have that covered).
• Proven ability to operate with limited supervision in a fast-paced launch environment, juggling dozens of concurrent issues without letting any fall through the cracks.
• Experience with vehicle launch programs and field quality monitoring strongly preferred.

Nice to Haves - Working knowledge of:

• Weibull analysis
• Statistics
• Forecasting failure rates
• Design for Reliability (DfR)
• Programming/scripting skills (Python, SQL, leveraging AI tools such as Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Cursor, etc.)
• Dashboarding

Pay Disclosure

The salary range for this role is $121,500 - $151,900 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.

Company Statements

Equal Opportunity

Rivian is an equal opportunity employer and complies with all applicable federal, state, and local fair employment practices laws. 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.

Rivian 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 [e-mail].

Candidate Data Privacy and Technology

Rivian 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 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) recordkeeping; (vi) ensuring network and information security and preventing fraud; and (vii) as otherwise required or permitted by applicable law.

Rivian 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 affiliates; and (iii) Rivian’s service providers, including providers of background checks, staffing services, and cloud services.

Rivian may transfer or store internationally your Candidate Personal Data, including to or in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, 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.

How We Use AI in Our Hiring Process: To ensure transparency, we want candidates to know that Rivian uses iCIMS Talent Cloud Artificial Intelligence (TCAI) and AI-enabled tools to assist with screening, reviewing, organizing and highlighting profiles and applications that match the key requirements for each role.

AI does not make hiring decisions: Qualified candidate applications are reviewed by a member of our team, and all decisions throughout the process are made by humans. We use AI to support efficiency and consistency, not to replace human judgment. We are committed to a fair, thoughtful, and equitable experience for every candidate.

Participation in AI profile matching is entirely voluntary. If you prefer that your profile not be used in this process, you can opt out at any time. Opting out means your profile will be excluded from automated matching and will not be surfaced for additional roles through this system. Your current application remains active and will not be affected in any way.

Please note that we are currently not accepting applications from third party application services.