Senior Vehicle Climate & Thermal Calibration Engineer

Rivian

Tustin (CA)

On-site

USD 122,000 - 152,000

Full time

4 days ago

Be an early applicant

Application generator

Stand out for this role — generate a tailored resume and cover letter in about a minute.

Get past ATS filters

Benefits offered by this job

Paid time off

Benefits package

401(k) plan

Job summary

Rivian seeks a Senior Thermal Development and Calibration Engineer to own vehicle climate comfort features from definition to production sign‑off. You will translate customer intent into requirements and lead calibration across vehicle, software, and thermal teams.

Role emphasizes real‑world climate behavior, HVAC systems, and cross‑functional collaboration with Rivian and VW Group Technologies teams. Strong technical judgment and leadership are essential for successful feature launch.

Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical, Electrical, Systems, Automotive Engineering or related field.
Minimum 5+ years of experience in automotive HVAC, thermal systems, feature development, controls, or calibration.
Demonstrated experience developing and validating vehicle climate comfort behavior.
Strong understanding of HVAC system operation, refrigerant/heat pump systems, airflow delivery, heating and cooling strategies, and occupant comfort behavior.
Experience creating test plans, validation procedures, and engineering documentation tied to requirements and sign‑off criteria.
Experience with data analysis, issue triage, and structured root cause investigation.
Strong communication skills and the ability to drive alignment across multiple engineering teams.
Ability to operate independently in an ambiguous development environment and lead technical convergence toward launch decisions.

Responsibilities

Support vehicle-level climate comfort feature development from concept through launch readiness and post‑SOP improvement.
Define feature use cases, operating states, triggers, inhibits, fallback behavior, and customer-facing acceptance criteria.
Translate climate comfort intent into clear cross‑functional requirements for vehicle systems, software, calibration, and subsystem teams.
Develop calibration strategies and tuning plans for HVAC and thermal comfort features across program milestones.
Lead calibration maturation for vehicle features across mule, lab car, chamber, road load, and program builds.
Create and maintain validation plans, DVP inputs, test procedures, and pass/fail criteria aligned to feature requirements and program milestones.
Plan and execute vehicle-level testing for climate comfort features in chamber, road, and extreme environment conditions.
Analyze test data, identify gaps to target, and drive issue triage, root cause, and closure across software, systems, and thermal teams.
Work directly with Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies System Software and implementation teams to define detailed feature logic, calibration hooks/parameters, diagnostics, and observability needs.
Partner with Aerothermal/attribute teams to align comfort targets, ambient assumptions, success criteria, and performance sign‑off expectations.
Interface with Thermal/Refrigeration subsystem teams on evaporator/airflow/compressor targets and validation conditions for feature success.
Collaborate with UI/UX teams to ensure settings behavior, alerts, messaging, and customer controls support the intended feature experience.
Drive readiness reviews using milestone-based KPI tracking for requirement maturity, calibration maturity, validation completion, issue closure, and launch risk.
Clearly communicate results, open issues, risks, and recommendation paths to engineering leadership and cross‑functional stakeholders.
Support post‑launch issue resolution, OTA improvements, and incorporation of field learnings into future feature updates.