Senior Software Engineer, Motion Planning, Autonomy at Rivian in US-CA-Palo Alto

Job description

• We are seeking Senior Software Engineers to play a pivotal role in the development of our Large Driving Model (LDM). In this role, you will take ownership of the data pipelines and curation strategies that fuel our models. You will be responsible for building miners that surface high-value examples, refining evaluation benchmarks, and collaborating directly with modeling teams to accelerate performance. If you are a strong individual contributor with a deep background in Python, a passion for autonomous systems, and the ability to navigate complex data challenges independently, we want to hear from you.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain scalable data mining pipelines to extract rare and critical driving
• scenarios from massive fleet datasets.
• Lead the curation and analysis of large-scale training sets to improve the robustness and
• generalization of the LDM.
• Design and implement rigorous evaluation frameworks to measure model performance against real-world baselines.
• Provide technical guidance and code reviews for junior and mid-level engineers,
• ensuring high standards for code quality and system design.
• Partner closely with modeling engineers to define data requirements and iterate on rapid experimental loops.
• Identify trends, anomalies, and data distribution shifts that impact model training and validation.
• Contribute to the design of data infrastructure, making informed decisions on tradeoffs between data quality, scale, and compute efficiency.
• Transition experimental data strategies

Requirements

• B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science, Data Science, Robotics, Engineering, or a related field.
• 3+ years of experience as a Software Engineer, Data Analytics Engineer, Machine Learning Engineer, or Motion Planning Engineer.
• Advanced proficiency in Python and SQL is required, with a proven track record of building production-grade data products.
• Hands-on experience with distributed data processing frameworks (e.g., Spark, Ray) and cloud infrastructure.
• Solid understanding of data-centric AI, dataset curation strategies, and model evaluation methodologies.
• Experience handling large-scale sensor data or complex robotics telemetry.
• Demonstrated ability to work autonomously, taking projects from a vague concept to a verified, high performing product.
• Strong ability to communicate technical trade-offs and collaborate effectively within a fast-paced team environment.

Skills

Required

• Python
• SQL
• Cloud infrastructure
• Data-centric AI
• Dataset curation strategies
• Model evaluation methodologies
• Large-scale sensor data handling
• Robotics telemetry
• Autonomous systems

Benefits

• The salary range for this role is $164,700.00- $205,900.00 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 a comprehensive package of benefits for full-time and part-time employees, their spouse or domestic partner, and children up to age 26, including but not limited to paid vacation, paid sick leave, and a competitive portfolio of insurance benefits including life, medical, dental, vision, short-term disability insurance, and long-term disability insurance to eligible employees. You may also have the opportunity to participate in Rivian’s 401(k) Plan and Employee Stock Purchase Program if you meet certain eligibility requirements. Full-time employee coverage is effective on their first day of employment. Part-time employee coverage is effective the first of the month following 90 days of employment. More information about benefits is available at rivianbenefits.com.