Sr. Controls & Safety Engineer, Autonomy

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.

We are seeking a highly motivated Controls Engineer to join our team, specializing in active safety feature development for autonomous and semi‑autonomous vehicles. This candidate will design, implement, and validate safety‑critical systems, with a strong emphasis on integrating controls, machine learning, and AI‑based algorithms to advance detection, prediction, and decision‑making capabilities. Proficient in C++, Python, and related technologies, they bring hands‑on experience in ML/AI model development, data analysis, and real‑time system optimization.

Their collaborative approach and familiarity with automotive safety standards make them well‑equipped to drive innovation and reliability in advanced vehicle safety applications within the Controls team.

• Design, develop, and validate active safety features such as collision avoidance, lane keeping, and emergency braking for autonomous vehicles.
• Collaborate with cross‑functional teams to integrate AI‑based algorithms into safety‑critical systems, leveraging data‑driven approaches to enhance detection, prediction, and decision‑making capabilities.
• Work closely with data engineering and autolabeling teams to ensure high‑quality training and validation datasets for ML/AI models.
• Collaborate with data engineering and autolabeling teams to ensure high‑quality, accurately labeled datasets that support the development and validation of ML/AI‑driven controls and active safety features, enabling robust reasoning and decision‑making capabilities in real‑world scenarios.
• Analyze sensor data and vehicle dynamics to improve the performance of ML/AI models used in active safety applications.
• Develop and maintain simulation and testing frameworks to ensure robust performance in real‑world scenarios.
• Troubleshoot, debug, and optimize safety features and ML/AI algorithms for reliability and performance across diverse driving environments.

• Bachelor’s/Master’s/PhD degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Data Science, or a related field.
• 3+ years of direct industry experience as a software engineer in robotics, autonomous vehicles, or other real‑time, safety‑critical environments.
• Strong proficiency in modern C++, Python, and experience with ML frameworks, along with experience applying large‑scale software engineering best practices.
• Strong background in machine learning, AI, and robotics, with hands‑on experience developing and deploying learning‑based algorithms.
• Experience designing, deploying, and maintaining systems with core AWS services (such as S3, EC2, Lambda), and a solid understanding of cloud‑native architecture.
• Familiarity with autonomous systems development, including perception, planning, or control, or related fields such as robotics, simulation, or verification and validation.
• Demonstrated ability to systematically debug and identify root causes of issues.
• Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills, with attention to detail
• Familiarity with automotive safety standards and real‑time system development.
• Excellent problem‑solving and communication skills.

The salary range for this role is $ - $ 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…