Staff Autonomy Product Manager

Rivian Rivian · Auto · Palo Alto, CA · Autonomous Driving

Staff Product Manager for Rivian's Autonomy team, responsible for the full regulatory compliance strategy for ADAS and Autonomy features in the US and Europe. This role involves designing and implementing innovative approaches to satisfy federal and state-level regulatory requirements, enabling Level 3 and/or 4 autonomy programs. The position requires navigating complex regulations, constructing technical arguments, and collaborating with legal and engineering teams to support negotiations with authorities and acceptance of novel development processes and data.

What you'd actually do

  1. Own end-to-end regulatory approval and consumer rating requirements for ADAS and Autonomy features, securing Type Approvals and NCAPs across North America and Europe and sustaining compliance through continuous OTA software update cycles, defining the process where none exists.
  2. Lead Rivian's state level Autonomous Vehicle (AV) regulatory strategy in the US, including supporting the obtainment and maintenance of AV testing and deployment permits (e.g., CA DMV Autonomous Vehicle Testing and Driverless Testing permits), and proactively tracking the evolving operational regulations across key states to unblock Rivian’s high level of Autonomy programs.
  3. Develop product requirements and process frameworks for ADAS and Autonomy compliance and build a development and testing pipeline for both virtual and physical tests, which ensures those requirements in ways regulators and technical agencies will accept for initial Type Approval and ongoing regulatory maintenance.
  4. Collaborate with the homologation and legal teams to support engagement with Technical Agencies, federal regulatory authorities (NHTSA, State DMVs, UNECE) and NCAP committees (US NCAP, Euro NCAP), providing the product and engineering substance needed to build the case for accepting Rivian's data, logic, and methodology.
  5. Work closely within the Autonomy engineering team to ensure AV operational requirements including safety driver protocols, incident reporting, and fleet data obligations are embedded into the product development process from day one, not retrofitted at launch.

Skills

Required

  • B.S. or M.S. in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
  • Proven experience designing and developing hardware and/or software systems for ADAS and Autonomy features.
  • Demonstrated ability to translate complex engineering data into compelling regulatory arguments.
  • Familiarity with US state and EU AV regulatory frameworks, including testing permit structures, operational requirements for autonomous driving vehicles, and the state-by-state legislative landscape for autonomous vehicle deployment.
  • Broad understanding of automotive components, development tools, and systems engineering processes.
  • Mastery of data-driven storytelling: using large-scale data to identify trends, validate hypotheses, and build the case for mission-critical decisions with external stakeholders.
  • Proven ability to root-cause complex issues across the stack and implement solutions in real-time safety-critical systems.
  • Ability to drive progress across a multi-domain, multi-component system in a fast-paced development environment.
  • Strong communication and leadership skills; able to guide cross-functional engineering teams through complex regulatory and consumer rating requirements — and to represent Rivian's technical position credibly to Technical agencies, regulatory authorities, and standards bodies.
  • Highly motivated to take features from R&D through to production-ready, certified, and operationally permitted products.

Nice to have

  • experience convincing technical authorities to accept novel approaches, not just satisfying pre-defined checklists.

What the JD emphasized

  • full regulatory compliance strategy
  • state AV testing and deployment regulations
  • novel development processes
  • novel approaches