Sr. Technical Program Manager - Materials & Joining

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.

The Technical Program Manager - Materials & Joining plays a critical role in driving Rivian's technology & strategy to support Standard Components and Materials Engineering within Rivian's Quality & Reliability department. You will partner with cross‑functional teams across Product Development, Manufacturing & Process Engineering, Procurement & Supply Chain, and Supplier Quality. Throughout the product lifecycle you will craft cross‑functional solutions that directly support our production schedule, improve efficiency, improve assembly quality, and enable research and development of advanced component offerings.

This role is located at our Tustin, CA facility and reports into Rivian's Materials Engineering team.

• Leadership – Lead the Technical Program Management effort for joints (including welds, adhesive, and mechanical fasteners), raw material, and finished goods products, in support of all Rivian programs. Act as a bridge between technical teams and business stakeholders, ensuring clear communication and alignment of program objectives. Provide regular updates to FAME leadership on program status, risks, and mitigation strategies.
• Engineering Critical Path – ensuring all Materials Engineering deliverables have timelines to manage critical path, and that the cadence of fasteners & materials development is being driven based on an aligned timeline, and with actively derisking the critical path in mind.
• Risk Management – working with the Fasteners and Materials focals to identify risks to programs and production, mitigation plans, and escalation before risks are realized. Communicating with vehicle‑level and Program teams and their TPMs, and ensuring alignment on the route forward. This is constantly evolving throughout the entire program, and dependent on the risks at hand.
• Issue Management – ensuring emergent issues are identified and resolved effectively throughout the program and issues are burned down before moving to more complex phases of the program.
• Scope Management – understanding and communicating Vehicle Line and Program goals to the FAME team, and decomposing them into a technical roadmap.
• Change Management – align on change management content, and that the changes are necessary, and then ensure high quality change execution when change is agreed upon.
• Targets Management – iterate with partner/using teams and vehicle lines on fastener/material budget targets, BOM cost, mass, unique part count (commonization), and then ensure those teams are achieving targets, help resolve issues, elevate roadblocks, and spot icebergs that would prevent targets from being achieved.
• Engineering – work with Materials Engineering focals to ensure short‑term and longer‑term projects are kept on budget and on schedule. Support emergent efforts, especially 'line down'/part shortages: coordinate and facilitate engagement of all parties to provide rapid direction for a viable solution, ensuring accountability and ownership across stakeholders.
• Data Integrity – contribute to the integration of material and joint test and simulation data into a robust data warehouse driving efficient data‑centric engineering decision making.
• Supply Chain and Procurement – work side by side with the Supply Chain and Fasteners Procurement teams to ensure projects are consistently followed and managed with respect to timelines, integration, stakeholders management and readiness. Key areas of note include re‑sourcing initiatives and new program pilot builds and launches.
• Bill of Materials Accuracy – support Standard Components & Materials on new part number releases/where used/QPVs. Understand…