Software Engineer, Edge AI

Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies is seeking an early‑career software engineer to build native services in C++/Rust for in‑vehicle compute across Linux, Android, and QNX. You will tackle hands‑on systems problems on telemetry, data upload, and embedded inference for voice assistants, with a focus on reliability, latency, and maintaining performance budgets on constrained hardware.

You'll collaborate with a small team, write design docs, review code, and debug on real vehicles, while

Qualifications

• 2-4 years of software engineering experience or equivalent
• Strong Linux and systems fundamentals
• Proficiency in C++ or Rust
• Clear written communication in design docs, tickets, and code reviews

Responsibilities

• Design and build native services in C++/Rust that run on vehicle compute across Linux, Android, and QNX targets
• Work on telemetry platform: signal collection, metrics on-vehicle, diagnostics
• Improve vehicle data upload path with throughput and reliability optimizations over Wi‑Fi and cellular
• Deploy and optimize ML models on vehicle NPU with per‑platform latency goals
• Instrument and debug in the field and with bench hardware; defend performance budgets

Skills

Linux fundamentals

C++ or Rust

Software engineering

Debugging large systems

Written communication

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in CS/CE/EE

Tools

gdb

perf

strace

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.

About The Team

The Connectivity Edge AI team owns the software in the vehicle that moves and makes sense of vehicle data. Our work covers broadly these areas:

• On-device AI. Running voice detection, speech and other ML models directly on vehicle compute so features keep working when the network does not.
• Vehicle data collection - The upload and retrieval path for large payloads such as camera clips and ADAS recordings, including throughput, reliability, and cost over Wi‑Fi and cellular.
• Connected features - Connected features like live camera streaming and mobile video downloads.

Our software ships on Rivian R1 and R2, last‑mile delivery vehicles, and Volkswagen Group platforms. Most of what we build has to work across several generations of hardware and more than one operating system.

About The Role

This is a hands‑on individual contributor role for an engineer early in their career who wants real systems problems. You will write C++/Rust for services that run inside a car, under fixed CPU and memory budgets, latency targets a customer can feel, and no ability to redeploy in an afternoon.

Where you start depends on your strengths and what the team needs at the time. You will work on one of the following areas as a starting project: the telemetry platform, the high-throughput upload path for ADAS and camera data, embedded inference for the voice assistant, and customer‑facing features built on top of all three.

We care far more about evidence that you build hard things than about years of experience or the particular stack you have used.

What You’ll Do

• Design and build native services in C++/Rust that run on vehicle compute across Linux, Android, and QNX targets.
• Work on the telemetry platform: signal collection, metrics derived on the vehicle rather than in the cloud, diagnostics, and the tooling engineering teams use to configure what a fleet reports.
• Improve the vehicle data upload path, including throughput and reliability over Wi‑Fi and cellular, event‑triggered and on‑demand retrieval, and the cost of moving data at fleet scale.
• Deploy and optimize ML models on the vehicle's NPU, including speech recognition, synthesis, and wake‑word detection, and hold them to per‑platform latency and accuracy targets.
• Instrument what you build so it can be debugged in the field, then use that data to find and fix problems on real vehicles.
• Benchmark, soak test, and defend performance budgets so regressions are caught before they ship.
• Write design docs, review code, and debug on bench hardware and in vehicles.

Basic Qualifications

• 2-4 years of software engineering experience, or a BS or MS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field with equivalent demonstrated building experience.
• Demonstrated evidence of building complex software systems. This can come from anywhere: hackathons, project or robotics competitions, a university tech club or engineering team, a substantial internship, open‑source contributions, or production work at a previous job. We want to hear about something you built, what was genuinely hard about it, and how you got it working.
• Strong Linux and systems fundamentals: processes, threading and concurrency, memory, inter‑process communication, and filesystems, plus the ability to debug a running system with tools like gdb, perf, and strace.
• Proficiency in either C++ or Rust.
• Ability to do methodical debugging on large interconnected systems.
• Clear written communication in design docs, tickets, and code reviews.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with inference runtimes such as ONNX Runtime, TensorRT, TFLite, llama.cpp, ExecuTorch, or a silicon vendor SDK, including quantization and deployment to constrained hardware.
• Experience with audio or speech models: speech recognition, text to speech, wake‑word detection, voice activity detection, or audio signal processing.
• Android development experience, particularly AOSP, the audio stack, HALs, Binder, or JNI.
• Embedded, automotive, robotics, or other resource‑constrained real‑time systems.
• Networking and large‑scale data transfer: throughput tuning, gRPC or similar IPC frameworks, and observability tooling.
• Contributions to open‑source systems or ML infrastructure projects.

Why This Role

Edge AI sits where vehicle software turns into a product decision. The scope is broad enough that you will not spend years on one narrow thing, and the team is small enough that your work is visible in the car. You will get real ownership early, with senior engineers around to review it.

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

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