An Engineering Manager at Rivian occupies a critical intersection of technical leadership, people development, and product execution. In this role, you are not merely keeping projects on schedule; you are actively driving the software and hardware integration that powers the world's most adventurous electric vehicles. Whether your team is focused on vehicle-to-cloud telemetry, charging infrastructure, infotainment, or advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), your leadership directly impacts how customers interact with their vehicles and how Rivian scales its production and digital ecosystem.

As an Engineering Manager, your primary challenge is to balance technical excellence with team health. You will guide highly skilled engineers through complex architectural decisions while fostering a culture of innovation, psychological safety, and rapid execution. At Rivian, engineering is highly cross-functional, meaning you will collaborate closely with Product Managers, Program Managers, and hardware teams to translate ambitious product visions into reliable, scalable, and safe engineering roadmaps.

The work you do here is highly visible and essential to Rivian's long-term success. Managing engineering teams in a fast-growing electric vehicle ecosystem requires high adaptability, deep technical empathy, and a passion for sustainable technology. If you thrive in dynamic environments where software meets physical product scaling, this role offers an unparalleled platform to make a lasting global impact.

The interview process at Rivian is designed to evaluate both your technical leadership and your people management capabilities. The questions below are representative of what you can expect, compiled from real candidate experiences across various engineering teams. They are grouped into core thematic categories to help you identify patterns and structure your preparation effectively.

People Management & Team Leadership

These questions evaluate your ability to build, structure, and scale high-performing engineering teams, as well as how you handle performance management and career development.

• How do you structure your engineering team to ensure high autonomy while maintaining alignment with company goals?
• Tell me about a time you had to manage a low-performing engineer. What steps did you take, and what was the outcome?

Preparing for an Engineering Manager interview at Rivian requires a balanced approach. You must demonstrate that you can dive deep into technical discussions while remaining focused on high-level strategy, team dynamics, and business outcomes.

To stand out, align your preparation with these key evaluation criteria:

People Leadership – Show that you have a structured, empathetic, and effective approach to managing people. Be prepared to discuss how you build trust, mentor diverse talent, manage underperformance, and structure teams for maximum impact and ownership.

Technical Competency – While you may not be writing code daily, you must show strong engineering instincts. You need to confidently lead technical discussions, ask the right architectural questions, and help your team navigate complex system trade-offs.

Execution & Delivery – Demonstrate your ability to ship high-quality software or systems in a complex, cross-functional environment. Interviewers will look for evidence of how you prioritize work, manage dependencies, and handle shifting requirements.

Culture & Collaboration – Rivian values collaborative, mission-driven leaders who communicate honestly and transparently. You should be ready to show how you partner with Product Management, design, and hardware teams to deliver cohesive customer experiences.

The interview loop for an Engineering Manager at Rivian is comprehensive and designed to assess your capabilities from multiple angles. The process typically begins with an initial recruiter screen to align on your background and mutual expectations. This is followed by a hiring manager interview, which focuses on your leadership style, past experiences, and the specific needs of the team.

If you advance, you will enter the panel interview stage. This stage is rigorous and often includes a formal technical presentation where you showcase a complex project you have led, followed by deep-dive Q&A sessions with peer engineering managers, senior engineers, and product partners. These sessions are usually spread over a few days or organized into dedicated blocks, depending on scheduling and time zones.

The timeline above outlines the standard progression from your initial contact to the final decision. Candidates should use this sequence to pace their preparation, ensuring they allocate ample time to build their technical presentation before reaching the panel stage. While the exact timing can vary based on team availability and location, the core evaluation blocks remain consistent.

To succeed in the Rivian interview loop, you must understand the specific competencies evaluated in each block of the panel. Here is a detailed breakdown of the primary evaluation areas.

Technical Presentation & System Architecture

The technical presentation is a defining element of the Rivian Engineering Manager loop. You will be asked to present a highly detailed architectural overview of a system or project you personally led and delivered. This session tests your ability to communicate complex concepts clearly, justify engineering decisions, and demonstrate deep technical ownership.

Be ready to go over:

• System Boundaries & Data Flow – How components interact, where data is stored, and how latency and throughput are optimized.
• Trade-off Analysis – Why you chose specific technologies or architectures over viable alternatives, including cost, scalability, and maintenance considerations.
• Operational Excellence – How the system is monitored, how failures are handled, and how you ensured high availability.

Advanced concepts (less common):

• Real-time telemetry ingestion and edge-to-cloud synchronization.
• Managing strict safety and regulatory compliance within software architecture.
• Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing integration for software deployments.

Example scenarios:

• "Present an architectural solution for a distributed service that handles millions of vehicle state updates per second with minimal latency."
• "Explain how you designed a system to gracefully degrade when network connectivity to the vehicle is lost."

People Management & Team Leadership

This area focuses on your ability to build, scale, and maintain healthy, high-performing engineering teams. Rivian looks for managers who can foster autonomy while ensuring high execution standards.

Be ready to go over:

• Performance Management – How you recognize high performance and how you constructively address sustained underperformance.
• Team Structuring – How you divide responsibilities, organize sub-teams, and scale resources to meet growing product demands.
• Mentorship & Growth – Your framework for developing senior technical leaders and guiding junior engineers.

Advanced concepts (less common):

• Managing highly distributed or remote teams across multiple time zones.
• Leading teams through organizational restructuring or rapid scaling phases.

Example scenarios:

• "Describe a time your team was burning out due to shifting priorities. How did you address the issue with leadership while protecting your team?"
• "How would you handle a situation where a key senior engineer threatens to leave during a critical delivery phase?"

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Product Alignment

Engineering at Rivian does not happen in a vacuum. You will work closely with Product Managers, program management, and design to deliver customer-facing and internal solutions.

Be ready to go over:

• Roadmap Negotiation – How you balance product feature requests with technical debt and architectural stability.
• Conflict Resolution – Your approach to resolving misalignments regarding scope, timelines, or resource allocation.
• Value-Driven Delivery – How you ensure your team understands the business impact and user value of the code they write.

Example scenarios:

• "A Product Manager wants to ship a feature immediately, but your team insists it requires a major architectural refactor first. How do you resolve this?"
• "Tell me about a time you had to align multiple engineering teams with competing priorities to deliver a shared initiative."