Software Engineer II, Vehicle Data Services

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

Our portfolio spans five distinct systems:

• A high-throughput telemetry query layer, serving time-series and aggregate queries against a real-time analytical store.

• A low-latency current-state service, answering "what is this vehicle doing right now" in under 100 milliseconds.

• A cloud control plane that pushes configuration out to vehicles at fleet scale and tracks every push through to acknowledgement.

• A semantic metadata layer — the registry of what each signal means, its units, its provenance, and how it relates to every other signal.

• A unified query gateway fronting all of the above, routing each request to the right backing store based on time range, cardinality, and latency budget.

The interesting problems live between those boxes rather than inside them. A configuration change on the control plane determines what the telemetry layer ingests, which determines what the gateway can route to, which determines what the metadata layer has to describe. An engineer who can hold that whole path in their head is worth more to us than a specialist in any single piece.

You will write production Go and Python, work with document databases and columnar analytical stores, build and consume gRPC and REST APIs, and operate services that run continuously against a global fleet. You will be on call for what you build. You will read a great deal of other people's code, and other people will read a great deal of yours.

 

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Building Services

  • Design & Deliver: Own backend features (Go, Python, Rust) from design through to production rollout.

  • Extend Configuration: Evolve our declarative, schema-validated configuration system to enable new capabilities by modifying configuration rather than writing handler code.

  • Orchestrate Fleet Config: Manage complex vehicle-side feature lifecycles, focusing on idempotency and reliable state delivery to intermittently connected devices.

  Data Platform

  • Platform Migration: Lead high-scale analytical store migrations, including schema design, ingestion, dual-writes, and cutover sequencing.

  • Optimize Tiered Storage: Build and maintain intelligent routing logic across low-latency key-value stores, mid-tier aggregation, and long-term lakehouse archives to balance performance and cost.

  • Stream Processing: Architect stateful, fleet-scale streaming consumers for enrichment and anomaly detection, tackling challenges like key skew, backpressure, and exactly-once semantics.

  Reliability & Ownership

  • Observability: Implement meaningful metrics, logging, and distributed tracing that focus on user-facing symptoms rather than internal noise.

  • Production Support: Own your code in production by participating in on-call rotations, debugging incidents, and driving follow-up work to prevent recurrence.

  • System Integrity: Strengthen test coverage to identify cross-system logic errors and integration defects rather than just unit-level bugs.

  Working Across Teams

  • Cross-Functional Partnership: Negotiate interface contracts with ingestion, firmware, and authentication teams to maintain clean boundaries.

  • Consumer Support: Directly support internal stakeholders (service engineering, product, autonomy) and use their feedback to drive platform improvements.

 

QUALIFICATIONS

Minimum Qualifications:

• A bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field - or the equivalent built the practical way.

• Two or more years building and operating backend services in production. Operating counts as much as building here: we want someone who has been paged, debugged something with the clock running, and shipped the fix.

• Strong proficiency in a statically typed, compiled backend language. Go and Python are what we write most; solid Java, Rust, C++, C#, or Kotlin experience translates well.

• Real working knowledge of at least one database and how it behaves under load - indexing, query planning, connection pooling, and the difference between a query that is correct and a query that is fast. Document stores are closest to our world; strong relational experience is equally credible.

• Practical experience designing and consuming HTTP or REST APIs, with opinions about versioning, backward compatibility, idempotency, and error semantics.

• Comfort with the usual toolchain - Git, containerized local development, CI pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code at least at a read-and-modify level.

• Clear writing. We are distributed across time zones, and most consequential technical decisions get made in a document or a merge request thread rather than a meeting. Writing well is not a soft skill on this team. It is load-bearing.

• Legal authorization to work in Canada.

Preferred Qualifications

• Production experience with Go and gRPC, including schema evolution in live systems.

• Deep expertise in high-cardinality time-series data modeling and real-time/columnar OLAP stores.

• Hands-on experience with distributed stream processing frameworks or distributed logs as primary data transport.

• Background in managing data-intensive systems, including lakehouse architectures and unified machine learning/inference pipelines.

• Experience with IoT fleets, connected devices, or telematics, supported by strong cloud (AWS/Kubernetes) and observability skills.

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 https://rvtech.mybenefits.life/.

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 https://app.ashbyhq.com/internal/job-board/b10a9912-eb45-4a84-9a34-84b2a459923a.

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) https://assets.ctfassets.net/2md5qhoeajym/53otRWdzXPzSdWPgiel5T/07c61b0eed2d91f2f403f788fd20d315/RVTech_Candidate_Data_Privacy_Notice_-_Nov_2024.pdf and Candidate Data Privacy Notice (Serbian) https://assets.ctfassets.net/2md5qhoeajym/40xUZMehbGToclkLqWXW0E/eb5b553bd8af7c607066253fbb227bda/RVTech_Candidate_Data_Privacy_Notice_-_Nov_2024_Serbian.pdf for more information.

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Please note this job posting represents an open, active vacancy. Additionally, we are not currently accepting applications from third party application services.