Functional Safety Risk Manager

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.

Leads the vehicle- and system-level functional safety risk management across safety‑critical functions, ensuring safety goals, HARA outputs, requirements, interface assumptions, audits, and validation evidence are aligned for a coherent program view. This role consolidates safety status across domains, facilitates governance forums and risk reviews, coordinates supplier safety assessments, and builds the frameworks, reporting structures, and cross‑functional mechanisms needed to scale consistent functional safety decision‑making across Rivian programs and partners.

• Define and run a functional safety risk management framework at vehicle and system level: maintain an integrated FuSa risk register, track risk ratings versus Rivian safety targets, and drive mitigation and escalation routines with program and domain leadership.
• Consolidate functional safety status reporting across domains (requirements, analyses, tests, audits, findings) into a single view for program reviews, providing a clear narrative on risk posture, gaps, and recovery plans.
• Plan and coordinate supplier functional safety audits and assessments: define scope and objectives, align cross‑functional participants, manage the audit calendar, track findings and corrective actions, and ensure outcomes are reflected in risk registers and safety cases.
• Maintain and continuously improve processes, templates, and dashboards (focus here) for functional safety integration (e.g., requirement and traceability patterns, risk registers, validation coverage views, audit trackers) to scale safety integration and risk management across programs and suppliers.
• Establish and facilitate governance forums (e.g., safety boards, risk reviews, change control) that provide collective voice for all functional safety stakeholders at Rivian, ensure consistent decision making, and document risk acceptance and waivers.
• Represent Rivian’s functional safety organization to suppliers, coordinating safety goals, requirements, safety concepts, and interface assumptions; ensuring robust Development Interface Agreements; and integrating supplier plans and risks into Rivian program plans.
• Own the milestones, tracking, and reporting of the decomposition of HARA outputs and safety goals into clear functional and technical safety requirements, interface specifications, and acceptance criteria, ensuring that ownership and ASIL allocation are understood across systems, hardware, and software teams.
• Report on the end‑to‑end traceability from hazards and safety goals through functional and technical safety requirements, software safety requirements, test cases, and evidence, using Rivian’s requirements management tools.

• 10+ years of experience in the automotive industry, with a background in functional safety.
• Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering, Applied Physics, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related engineering field.
• Demonstrated ability to work independently and reliably in a fast‑paced environment.
• Strong curiosity and technical depth to understand the product and how safety and regulatory requirements apply to it.
• Experience with formal requirements management and traceability tools.
• Strong interpersonal and cross‑functional collaboration skills, with the ability to build effective relationships across Rivian and with external suppliers and vendors.

The salary range for this role is $167,400 – $209,300 for Palo Alto, California based applicants. This is the lowest to highest salary we in good faith believe we would pay for this role at…