Cognitive Engineering Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

About Us
Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies is a joint venture between two industry leaders with a clear vision for automotive's next chapter. From operating systems to zonal controllers to cloud and connectivity solutions, we're addressing the challenges of electric vehicles through technology that will set the standards for software-defined vehicles around the world.
The road to the future is uncharted. By combining our expertise across connectivity, AI, security and more, we'll map a new way forward. Working together, we'll create a future that's more connected, more intelligent, more sustainable for everyone.
Role Summary
As a Senior Staff Software Engineer specializing in agentic applications, you will be the preeminent technical authority for our GenAI platform, setting architecture and strategy that spans multiple engineering organizations and shapes the company's long-term technology roadmap. You will lead the enterprise-wide integration of LLMs across our internal and customer-facing application portfolio. Your focus will be on driving cognitive automation at scale, transforming how the organization approaches decision-making and workflow automation, and establishing the engineering standards that define resilient, scalable, and observable distributed systems company-wide. You will operate as a force multiplier - influencing technical direction well beyond your immediate team and acting as a key partner to senior leadership in shaping the future of the platform.
Responsibilities

• Architect and Own Agentic Systems at Enterprise Scale: Architect and lead the development of highly sophisticated, mission-critical intelligent agent systems that utilize LLMs to automate workflows, optimize operations, and elevate user experiences - setting technical direction across the entire engineering organization and influencing strategy at the company level.
• Define and Own Enterprise LLM Integration Strategy: Own and drive the multi-year technical vision for integrating LLMs across the company's software ecosystem, ensuring robust, scalable, and maintainable communication and data exchange. Serve as the ultimate technical authority and final escalation point for LLM architecture decisions across the organization.
• Lead the Enterprise Cognitive Automation Roadmap: Partner directly with senior leadership, product executives, and engineering leaders to define and own the company-wide strategic direction for cognitive automation. Leverage LLMs to transform complex cognitive tasks - such as information extraction, summarization, and question answering - into scalable, repeatable capabilities across the enterprise.
• Champion Scalable System Design at Organizational Scale: Take ultimate technical ownership of the entire development lifecycle for the organization's most strategically important machine learning-powered tools and applications. Establish technical frameworks and architectural patterns that are adopted company-wide and that outlast individual projects or teams.
• Define and Uphold Engineering Standards Across the Company: Set the engineering culture at the organizational level. Establish and enforce industry-leading standards for building production-grade, distributed machine learning solutions, and ensure consistent adoption across all engineering teams, not just your own.
• Drive Technical Consensus and Shape Company Direction: Continuously research and experiment with emerging trends in machine learning, AI agents, and distributed systems. Translate findings into actionable technical strategy with measurable, company-wide impact, and represent the organization's technical point of view in industry and cross-company forums where relevant.
• Lead Cross-Functional and Executive Alignment: Work closely with machine learning engineers, product teams, and senior/executive leadership to gather requirements, define strategic scope, and deliver high-impact solutions. Own technical alignment across the entire organization and serve as the primary engineering representative at the executive level.
• Grow and Elevate Engineering Talent Organization-Wide: Mentor and elevate engineers at all levels, from mid-level to principal/staff, fostering a culture of technical excellence, innovation, and continuous learning across the company. Own hiring strategy and serve as the final technical bar-raiser for senior and staff-level hires.

Qualifications

• Advanced Degree: Bachelor's, Master's, or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field.
• Proven Experience: 15+ years of hands-on experience in software engineering, with deep expertise in designing and building large-scale distributed systems. Extensive, hands-on experience architecting and deploying complex agentic applications leveraging LLMs in production at enterprise scale. Demonstrated track record of company-wide, and ideally industry-recognized, technical impact.
• Strong Technical Skills: Expertise in Golang is strongly preferred. Deep proficiency in Python or similar languages, along with expert-level knowledge of cloud and container frameworks such as AWS and Kubernetes. A proven track record of architecting highly scalable, fault-tolerant, and observable distributed systems used across an entire organization.
• Deep Understanding: Expert-level, authoritative grasp of machine learning principles, algorithms, and evaluation metrics, as well as software engineering best practices for distributed systems at scale.
• Production Experience: Demonstrated success owning the design, deployment, and operation of mission-critical backend software in high-stakes production environments at company-wide organizational scale.
• Collaborative Spirit and Technical Leadership: Exceptional communication and influencing skills, with a proven ability to build consensus among executive stakeholders, define engineering culture at the organizational level, and align the entire company on complex, high-stakes technical decisions.
• Passion for Innovation: A genuine and demonstrated passion for advancing the state of the art in machine learning and natural language processing, with a track record of translating cutting-edge research into durable business impact at scale.

Total Rewards
We build the exceptional - and we believe the people doing that work should be rewarded accordingly. In addition to a competitive base salary, full-time positions may be is eligible to participate in our annual company performance bonus program.
Payments are discretionary and not guaranteed; actual amounts depend on company results and the terms of the plan in effect, and require active employment at the time of payout. This role is also eligible for equity in the form of Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), subject to board approval and the terms of our equity incentive plans, including applicable vesting requirements.
In addition to our compensation programs, we invest in our people with a comprehensive benefits package designed to support the health, wellbeing, and financial future for full-time employees - including health coverage, retirement savings, time off, and family planning programs. Offerings vary by country. Learn more about our global benefit programs.
External candidates can apply for this role through the Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies careers site (https://rivianvw.tech/#careers). If you are a current employee, please apply through our internal job board.
Equal Opportunity
Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information or characteristics, physical or mental disability, marital/domestic partner status, age, military/veteran status, medical condition, or any other characteristic protected by law. We are also committed to ensuring compliance with all applicable fair employment practice laws regarding citizenship and immigration status.
Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies is committed to ensuring that our hiring process is accessible for persons with disabilities. If you have a disability or limitation, such as those covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act, that requires accommodations to assist you in the search and application process, please email us at candidateaccommodations@rivian.com.
Candidate Data Privacy
Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies" may collect, use and disclose your personal information or personal data (within the meaning of the applicable data protection laws) when you apply for employment and/or participate in our recruitment processes ("Candidate Personal Data"). This data includes contact, demographic, communications, educational, professional, employment, social media/website, network/device, recruiting system usage/interaction, security and preference information. Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies may use your Candidate Personal Data for the purposes of (i) tracking interactions with our recruiting system; (ii) carrying out, analyzing and improving our application and recruitment process, including assessing you and your application and conducting employment, background and reference checks; (iii) establishing an employment relationship or entering into an employment contract with you; (iv) complying with our legal, regulatory and corporate governance obligations; (v) record keeping; (vi) ensuring network and information security and preventing fraud; and (vii) as otherwise required or permitted by applicable law.
Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies may share your Candidate Personal Data with (i) internal personnel who have a need to know such information in order to perform their duties, including individuals on our People Team, Finance, Legal, and the team(s) with the position(s) for which you are applying; (ii) Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies affiliates; and (iii) Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies' service providers, including providers of background checks, staffing services, and cloud services.
Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies may transfer or store internationally your Candidate Personal Data, including to or in the United States, Canada, and the European Union and in the cloud, and this data may be subject to the laws and accessible to the courts, law enforcement and national security authorities of such jurisdictions.
If you provide a mobile telephone number as part of your application or during the recruitment process, Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies may use that number to contact you via SMS text message for recruitment-related purposes, including scheduling, logistics, and status updates. Message and data rates may apply. You may opt out of SMS communications at any time by replying STOP to any text message you receive from us. Consent to receive SMS messages is not a condition of applying for or being considered for employment.
Please see our Candidate Data Privacy Notice (English)and Candidate Data Privacy Notice (Serbian) for more information.
Please note this job posting represents an open, active vacancy. Additionally, we are not currently accepting applications from third party application services.