Sr. Systems Engineer - Lighting

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 As an automotive lighting systems engineer, you will play a critical role in the design, development, and validation of exterior lighting systems on our Rivian vehicles. Your responsibilities span the entire product lifecycle, from initial concept to mass production and beyond.

You must combine strong analytical skills, creative problem-solving abilities, and excellent communication to bring innovative and compliant lighting solutions to life in our vehicle product line. You will serve as a key technical contact, facilitating communication among RV Tech (Body Controls), Engineering and Suppliers.

Your role will involve cross-functional collaboration to ensure seamless vehicle level integration of each lamp as well as robust vehicle level verification as well as homologation compliance. Responsibilities Communicate with core stakeholders to identify the required User Stories to be delivered by the system. Understand the why and what from product owners, marketing, and safety teams. Derive the appropriate system level requirements (functional and non-functional) to robustly deliver the high-level User Stories.

Develop detailed mathematical or logical models (often using tools like MATLAB/Simulink or Enterprise Architect) to describe exactly how the feature behaves under different vehicle states. Generate architectural level decisions to implement the appropriate solutions. Maintain lighting system architecture for the allocated vehicles as well as generate architectural level decisions to drive optimized solutions based on provided trading parameters (usually cost, weight and time).

Quality Assurance:
Design tests that prove the derived requirements and the original user stories are met. This includes unit testing, integration testing, and full vehicle validation on the road. Conduct high level root-cause analysis for any lighting system faults. Investigate system-level failures, often involving reviewing communication logs (CAN traces), module diagnostics, and correlating them with the functional model to find the source of the issue.

Working directly with Design Release Engineers (DREs) for individual components and Tier 1 suppliers to ensure the production designs conform to the system architecture and requirements. Qualifications Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering or related discipline 5+ years (preferred) of applicable systems Engineering (Lighting Preferred), eliciting requirements or running validation. Capable of managing a complete system (Lighting Preferred) through the complete standard V-cycle including vehicle level integration and testing with a degree of oversight from a Senior Engineer

Demonstrated proficiency in requirements management tools (Flow and Jama preferred) as well as engineering modeling tools such as Simulink or Enterprise Architect. This role includes significant focus (approximately 50%) on architecture development and refinement Preferred experience using automotive data bus logging tools such as Vector Canalyzer, CANoe and CANape. Able to apply fundamental and first principles to identify analyse and resolve technical challenges Demonstrated ability to manage information, prioritize tasks, and communicate project status with clarity.

Able to Communicate clearly and concisely with both technical and non-technical audiences. Pay Disclosure The salary range for this role is $107,800 - $142,900 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…