Staff Software Engineer, Infotainment HMI Systems

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 The Berlin team is looking for a Staff Software Engineer - Infotainment, to provide hands-on technical leadership for complex embedded software and hardware/software integration work. You will help shape architectures that connect vehicle hardware, embedded operating systems, platform services, communication paths, and user-facing behavior into reliable products. This is a broad technical role for an engineer who can move comfortably between system-level design and implementation. You will work across current and next-generation vehicle platforms, helping teams take ideas from early architecture through development, integration, validation, and production readiness. You’ll be working in a high-performing forward-deployed team working closely with key OEM stakeholders. Examples include physical input, HMI systems and bespoke in-vehicle touchpoints. This role is based in our Berlin office and requires a minimum of three days per week onsite.

Responsibilities

Architect, design, develop, and maintain embedded software across hardware interfaces, operating-system services, middleware, communication paths, and applications, using C/C++ and contributing to Rust adoption where it improves safety, reliability, maintainability, or service boundaries. Lead technical design discussions and translate ambiguous requirements into clear interfaces, ownership boundaries, acceptance criteria, dependencies, delivery plans, reusable abstractions, and configuration contracts that scale across vehicle platforms, products, and variants. Evaluate and optimize constrained systems for CPU, memory, storage, power, latency, startup, concurrency, and fault handling while ensuring predictable behavior, reliability, and maintainability. Guide the integration of hardware-linked behavior—including physical controls, display interaction, vehicle signals, persistent state, device configuration, and other time-sensitive system behavior—across software and hardware components. Lead complex software and hardware investigations and drive end-to-end validation using logs, traces, diagnostics, target hardware, laboratory equipment, simulators, emulators, software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, and prototype vehicles. Partner with hardware, firmware, platform, application, validation, product, and external teams to resolve dependencies and make timely technical decisions; establish practices for schemas, generated bindings, diagnostics, observability, versioning, compatibility, and maintainability; and mentor engineers while communicating architecture, risks, trade-offs, and decisions clearly.

Qualifications

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience, plus seven or more years developing or integrating embedded, platform, or hardware-linked software. Strong hands-on experience developing, debugging, reviewing, and maintaining C and/or C++ software, with practical Rust experience or the ability and interest to learn Rust. Experience with embedded operating systems, embedded Linux, real-time systems, board-support packages, device drivers, hypervisor-based systems, or comparable constrained computing environments. Strong understanding of hardware/software interfaces, communication protocols, concurrency, timing, startup and reset behavior, resource constraints, fault handling, and system performance across CPU, power, memory, storage, latency, reliability, and degraded operation. Experience leading architecture, integration, and system-level debugging across multiple software and hardware components, defining interface contracts, schemas, generated bindings, diagnostics, logging, versioning, compatibility practices, and end-to-end validation. Experience with automotive, aerospace, mobile-device, consumer-electronics, robotics, industrial-control, defense, or similarly constrained embedded products, including HMI, physical controls, display systems, vehicle signals, gateways, input routing, or other real-time hardware-linked behavior. Experience with ARM-based systems, high-performance system-on-chip platforms, board bring-up, hardware debugging tools, and interfaces such as CAN, Ethernet, USB, PCIe, SPI, or I2C; familiarity with reusable platform, middleware, SDK, or device-integration components, CI/CD, telemetry, diagnostic logging, command-line tooling, and laboratory-debugging workflows, plus excellent communication skills across distributed teams and external partners. 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 — inclu