MBA Intern - Product Management Product Development (Spring 2027 Co-Op) at Rivian in US-CA-Palo Alto

Job description

• Rivian internships are experiences optimized for student candidates. To be eligible, you must be an undergraduate or graduate student in an accredited program during the internship term with an expected graduation date between December 2027 and 2029. Rivian's Internship Program requires active student enrollment. Information regarding your expected degree completion date is collected solely to verify eligibility and determine your availability for future full-time opportunities. Rivian is an equal opportunity employer and does not use graduation dates to determine the age of applicants or as a basis for discriminatory hiring decisions.
• If you are not pursuing a degree, please see our full time positions on our Rivian careers site. Note that if your university has specific requirements for internship programs, it is your responsibility to fulfill those requirements.
• Our Spring Co-Op program runs from Jan - Aug, 2027 . In order to be considered for this role, you must be available to work full time (40 hours per week), onsite, for the entire duration. If you are unable to work during the spring semester, please apply to our Summer Internship Program.
• No Visa Sponsorship
• This Product Management role directly drives Rivian's engineering efficiency and compliance rigor through targeted, user-validated AI prototyping.
• Accelerated Engineering Velocity: By translating unarticulated engineering pain points into validated prototypes and actionable technical specs, this role drastically reduces the friction between concept and execution. Using AI-assisted tools to build the core loop means Rivian gets production-ready, signed-off plans faster, eliminating development bottlenecks for the engineering teams.
• Streamlined Requirements-to-Compliance: The creation of a structured requirement schema and a dedicated "plan-approve-execute-cite" loop directly tackles the compliance burden. This ensures Product Development (PD) engineers can navigate complex technical requirements reliably, mitigating risk and ensuring strict traceability across Rivian's vehicle programs.
• Evidence-Based Resource Allocation: By testing mockups with real engineers and documenting concrete business impacts, this role removes assumptions from the planning process. Leadership receives a clear, data-backed business case proving the module's ROI, allowing them to confidently fund and greenlight the next phases of development based on demonstrated trust and usability.

Responsibilities

• Discover: Interview engineers to uncover real pain points — including needs they can't articulate themselves; translate into a structured requirement schema
• Define: Write the PRDs (interaction model, requirements, success metrics); mock up the concept before anything gets built
• Validate: Test mockups with real engineers on real requirements; revise the spec based on what actually builds trust, not just stated preferences
• Build: Use AI-assisted coding tools to prototype the core plan-approve-execute-cite loop; document what's real vs. simulated
• Hand off: Package the prototype into a technical spec engineering can act on; land a signed-off productionization plan
• Deliver business impact: Translate this module into a clear case for Rivian — faster, more reliable requirements-to-compliance work for PD engineers — backed by evidence, not assumptions, so leadership can confidently fund the next phase

Requirements

• Must be currently pursuing a MBA or Masters degree at an accredited university.
• Technical fluency — can talk Design, Bill Of Materials, and hardware engineering lingo without a translator.
• Hands-on AI-assisted coding experience — has experience building with Claude Code/Cursor/similar.
• Sharp spec-writing & user research skills — can run interviews and write a PRD someone can build from with zero back-and-forth.
• Track record of technical handoff — experience with having engineers build from their written spec.

Skills

Required

• Spec-writing and user research

Benefits

• We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including but not limited to paid vacation, paid sick leave, and medical insurance benefits. More information about benefits is available at rivianbenefits.com.
• The salary range for this role is $33.00-51.00/HR for Palo Alto 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.