Staff Software Engineer, Vehicle Configuration Platform
Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies4 hours ago
Berlin, GermanyStaff+
Responsibilities
- Own the technical direction and roadmap for configuration tooling, validation, and delivery infrastructure.
- Lead platform simplification, legacy retirement, and migration initiatives while maintaining downstream compatibility.
- Design compatibility strategies and automated enforcement for schemas and data contracts deployed to vehicles in the field.
- Architect validation and release pipelines with layered checks, staged rollouts, and observability.
- Serve as the senior escalation point for production configuration issues and lead root-cause analysis and systemic prevention.
- Drive alignment across firmware, cloud, diagnostics, manufacturing, OTA, factory, and partner-brand stakeholders.
- Mentor engineers, improve design reviews and technical documentation, and grow mid-level engineers toward ownership.
- Remain accountable for the long-term maintenance cost of shipped systems.
Requirements
- 8+ years of software engineering experience, including ownership of a platform, infrastructure, or developer-facing system used by many teams.
- Demonstrated leadership of cross-team technical initiatives from proposal through delivery, including deprecation or migration from entrenched systems.
- Deep experience with serialization formats such as Protocol Buffers and strict backward and forward compatibility for devices that cannot be force-updated.
- Strong Python and working C literacy, plus deep experience with Bazel including writing rules and repository-level integration.
- Mature CI/CD and release engineering judgment, including automated validation gates and rollout mechanics.
- Ability to lead time-critical production fixes while maintaining sound engineering judgment under pressure.
- Excellent written and verbal communication with technical and non-software stakeholders.
- Automotive or embedded experience such as UDS diagnostics, vehicle variant coding, factory provisioning, or OTA update systems is preferred.
- Rust experience is preferred.
- Experience with multi-company or partner-engineering environments, code generation toolchains such as protoc plugins or template-based generators, and manifest-based multi-repository workflows is preferred.
Benefits
- Competitive base salary, annual company performance bonus eligibility, and equity in the form of RSUs, subject to applicable conditions.
- Comprehensive benefits including health coverage, retirement savings, time off, and family planning programs; offerings vary by country.
- Based in Berlin with a minimum of three days per week onsite and occasional travel to company and partner sites.
- Full-time role with benefits and bonus eligibility.
About Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies
Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies is a 2024 joint venture building software and electrical architectures for software-defined electric vehicles. It develops in-vehicle operating systems, zonal controllers, connectivity, and cloud solutions used by Rivian and Volkswagen Group brands. The privately held company is headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, and focuses on creating a shared platform that can be integrated and licensed across multiple vehicle programs.