Senior Lead, Process Excellence & AI

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.

About the team The People Operational Excellence & AI team sits at the intersection of process design, people systems, and artificial intelligence. We build the operating infrastructure that enables Rivian’s 14,000+ person workforce – from the plant floor in Normal, IL to corporate and commercial teams – to move faster, smarter, and with fewer manual workarounds.

We own the technology portfolio, AI adoption strategy, and process transformation agenda for Rivian’s People function. Our current priorities span a portfolio of AI‑enabled automation initiatives across the employee lifecycle – all in service of building a People team that operates with the same rigor and precision as the vehicles we make.

About the role We’re looking for someone who can map a broken process in the morning and design an AI‑assisted future state in the afternoon. This role is the connective tissue between how Rivian’s People team works today and how it needs to work to meet the growing demands and complexity of our rapidly scaling global organization.

You’ll lead process mapping and redesign across our highest‑priority initiatives – Talent Acquisition transformation, Internal Mobility, onboarding, employee support, and shared services – while bringing an AI efficiency lens to every intervention. You’ll translate process realities from the ground floor into system requirements, identify where automation creates genuine leverage, and help the People team build the muscle to work differently.

This is a consulting, project management, and hands‑on builder role all ’s an operator who diagnoses like a consultant, drives like a project manager, designs like a systems thinker, and builds things that stick.

• Design the way People work – help define how core People work is structured, documented, and executed across COEs, Shared Services, Talent Acquisition, and People Partners so Rivian can scale with less friction and more clarity.
• Unlock capacity through AI and automation – identify practical opportunities to apply AI agents, workflow automation, and knowledge management to reduce manual work, improve quality, and create more space for strategic work.
• Connect process reality to platform decisions – bridge People, IT, and Data to ensure our systems and workflows reflect how work actually happens on the ground – not just how it is intended to happen on paper.
• Strengthen the foundation for scale – as Rivian continues to grow, help standardize global practices, improve cross‑team handoffs, and build the People infrastructure needed to support a 14,000+ person workforce across manufacturing, commercial, and corporate environments.

Process Mapping & Redesign

• Map processes end‑to‑end, not just on paper. Lead current and future‑state process mapping across People initiatives – from Talent Acquisition and Internal Mobility to onboarding, employee support, and shared services. Go deep enough to surface the real problems: the workarounds, the undocumented exceptions, and the places where work falls through the cracks between teams.
• Establish practical standards. Define process design, documentation, handoff, and governance standards so teams can execute more consistently and scale with less variability.
• Identify and eliminate friction. Surface sources of avoidable demand and manual lift, then lead simplification efforts with measurable impact on cycle time, quality, throughput, and user experience.

AI, Automation & Digital Enablement

• Design AI‑and‑Workday‑enabled process solutions. Translate process problems into concrete solutions that leverage Workday and AI agents. Prototype where it…