Sr. Staff AI Engineer, Enterprise Applied AI

Rivian; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 265,000 - 331,300; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical/Rx insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

Job summary

A leading electric vehicle company is seeking a Staff AI Engineer to develop and scale enterprise AI solutions. The role involves designing production-grade systems, collaborating with multiple departments, and mentoring engineers. Candidates should have significant experience in software engineering and AI/ML, with strong communication skills and the ability to translate business needs into effective AI products. This is a unique opportunity to make an impact in a pioneering company committed to sustainability.

Qualifications

• 8+ years experience in software engineering for Staff level, or 12+ for Senior Staff.
• Experience building and deploying AI solutions using language models.
• Ability to translate ambiguous business problems into AI products.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and development of AI applications and services.
• Define architecture and engineering standards for AI systems.
• Mentor other engineers and improve code quality.

Skills

AI/ML expertise

Software engineering

Stakeholder management

Technical leadership

Communication skills

Education

BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science or related field

Job description

About Rivian

Rivian is 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

Rivian is seeking an entrepreneurial, hands‑on senior individual contributor to build and scale our Enterprise Applied AI solutions driving impact across internal teams. As a Staff AI Engineer (Staff or Senior Staff), you will design, build, and operate production‑grade systems at the forefront of generative AI, partnering with leaders across the company to unlock transformative business value. You will set technical direction, own complex domains, and raise the engineering bar through architectural leadership, operational excellence, and pragmatic innovation with language models and machine learning. You will work closely with Operations (Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Procurement, Quality), Product, Sales, Customer Service, Finance, HR, and other internal partners to align technical solutions to measurable enterprise outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical design and hands‑on development of prioritized AI applications, services, and platforms leveraging state‑of‑the‑art LLM app stacks, retrieval‑augmented generation, evaluation frameworks, and scalable serving.
• Define long‑term architecture and engineering standards for Applied AI systems to maximize reuse, reliability, and impact across multiple product areas.
• Partner with business sponsors to translate high‑value opportunities into roadmaps and shipped products with clear success metrics and measurable outcomes.
• Build a holistic view of AI investments by collaborating with adjacent engineering groups implementing AI in their domains, aligning patterns, reusing components, and avoiding duplication.
• Drive continuous improvement in AI methodologies and best practices; evaluate emerging capabilities and land them as secure, production‑grade systems.
• Collaborate with Legal, Compliance, Risk, Audit, and Security to embed robust governance, privacy, security, safety, and reporting practices across the AI lifecycle.
• Champion AI literacy, enablement, and adoption through demos, guidance, and technical leadership across the org.
• Mentor engineers across levels; lead design reviews; improve code quality, reliability, observability, and cost/performance of AI workloads.
• Establish rigorous evaluation, guardrails, and monitoring practices; instrument offline and online metrics to ensure quality, safety, and SLOs.
• Optimize latency, throughput, and cost at scale; guide make/buy decisions and vendor integrations where appropriate.

Qualifications

• BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years (Staff) or 12+ years (Senior Staff) in software engineering, with a proven track record delivering complex, production‑ready systems in enterprise environments.
• Deep technical knowledge in AI/ML, with hands‑on experience building and deploying solutions using language models, retrieval/grounding, embeddings/vector search, and evaluation.
• Demonstrated ability to translate ambiguous business problems into robust AI products with measurable business impact.
• Experience defining and evolving architectures, standards, and platforms that create leverage across multiple teams.
• Strong familiarity with security, privacy, compliance, safety, and auditability for enterprise AI systems.
• Excellence in communication and stakeholder management; able to influence and align across diverse teams.
• Proven curiosity and mental agility to learn and apply new technologies through hands‑on development and continuous learning.

Pay Disclosure

Salary range for California Based Applicants: $265,000 - $331,300 (actual compensation will be determined based on experience, location, and other factors permitted by law).

Benefits Summary: Rivian provides robust medical/Rx, dental and vision insurance packages for full‑time employees, their spouse or domestic partner, and children up to age 26. Coverage is effective on the first day of employment, and Rivian covers most of the premiums.

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 at [e-mail].

Candidate Data Privacy

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.

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