Junior Backend Software Engineer Jobs in Riverside, CA

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.

Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies Canada is proud to be a Great Place To Work® Certified company — 92% of employees at RV Tech Canada say it is a great place to work, compared to 60% at a typical company.

 Role Summary

As a Senior Software Engineer specializing in agentic applications, you will be a key technical leader and influential voice in shaping our GenAI platform's architecture and strategy. You will play a pivotal role in integrating LLMs with our internal and customer-facing applications at scale. Your focus will be on leveraging LLMs to drive cognitive automation, streamlining workflows, and enhancing decision-making. You'll also pioneer and evangelize best practices in building resilient, scalable, and observable distributed systems, ensuring the creation of production-grade tools that are scalable, reliable, and maintainable across the organization.

 Responsibilities

• Architect Design of Agentic Systems: Architect and lead the development of highly scalable and sophisticated intelligent agents that utilize LLMs to automate workflows, optimize operations, and elevate user experiences across our internal and customer-facing applications.

• Shape LLM Integration Strategy: In partnership with your peers, help define and drive the technical vision and long-term strategy for integrating LLMs with our evolving software ecosystem, ensuring robust, scalable, and maintainable communication and data exchange.

• Drive the Cognitive Automation Roadmap: Collaborate with product managers and other technical leaders to identify and prioritize high-impact opportunities for cognitive automation. Leverage LLMs to automate complex cognitive tasks, such as information extraction, summarization, and question answering, to enhance efficiency and accuracy system-wide.

• Champion Scalable System Design: Take ownership of the entire development lifecycle, from conceptualization and design to implementation and deployment, for our most critical machine learning-powered tools and applications.

• Establish and Uphold Engineering Best Practices: Define, implement, and enforce industry-leading standards for building production-grade, distributed machine learning solutions, ensuring scalability, reliability, and maintainability.

• Drive Technical Consensus and Influence Direction: Continuously research and experiment with emerging trends in machine learning, AI agents, and distributed systems.

• Collaborate and Lead Cross-Functionally: Work closely with Machine Learning engineers, product teams, and senior leadership to gather requirements, define project scope, and deliver impactful solutions. Drive technical alignment across multiple teams.

• Mentor and Develop Technical Talent: Share your expertise and provide guidance to senior engineers and technical leads, fostering a culture of technical excellence, innovation, and continuous learning.

 Qualifications

• Advanced Degree: Bachelor's, Master's degree or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field.

• Proven Experience: 8+ years of hands-on experience in software engineering, with a deep focus on designing and building large-scale distributed systems. Extensive, hands-on experience in building and deploying complex agentic applications leveraging LLMs in production environments.

• Strong Technical Skills: Expertise in Golang is strongly preferred. Proficiency in Python or similar programming languages, as well as deep expertise with cloud and container frameworks such as AWS and Kubernetes. A proven track record of designing and building highly scalable, fault-tolerant, and observable distributed systems.

• Deep Understanding: Expert-level grasp of machine learning principles, algorithms, and evaluation metrics, as well as software engineering best practices for distributed systems.

• Production Experience: Demonstrated success in leading the design, deployment, and operation of scalable backend software in high-stakes production environments.

• Collaborative Spirit and Technical Leadership: Excellent communication and teamwork skills, with a proven ability to influence, build consensus with senior engineering peers, and align cross-functional teams and senior stakeholders on complex technical decisions.

• Passion for Innovation: A genuine interest in exploring the latest advancements in machine learning and natural language processing and applying them to solve impactful business challenges 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.