Engineering Manager, Commercial Technology — Identity Platform

About Rivian Rivian is on a mission to keep the world adventurous forever. This goes for the emissions-free Electric Adventure Vehicles we build, and the curious, courageous souls we seek to attract. As a company, we constantly challenge what’s possible, never simply accepting what has always been done. We reframe old problems, seek new solutions and operate comfortably in areas that are unknown. Our backgrounds are diverse, but our team shares a love of the outdoors and a desire to protect it for future generations. Role Summary We're looking for an Engineering Manager to lead Rivian's Identity Platform team — one of the most critical infrastructure platforms in our stack. This system underpins authentication, authorization, and user lifecycle management for every customer-facing product Rivian ships: mobile, web, and vehicle software. You will be the people and delivery leader for a newly formed Serbia-based team, reporting directly to the Director of Software Engineering. This is a senior leadership hire. You'll build the team from the ground up, own the engineering roadmap, drive knowledge transfer from the outgoing US team, and serve as the primary interface between your engineers and the many internal teams that depend on the identity platform. Over time, this role is expected to expand in scope as additional domains come under your leadership. You should be comfortable operating at the intersection of people management, technical credibility, and cross-functional stakeholder coordination. Responsibilities - Lead, grow, and develop a team of engineers working on Rivian's customer identity platform - Drive hiring, onboarding, and culture-setting for the initial Serbia-based team - Own sprint planning, backlog prioritization, and delivery of the team's roadmap - Coordinate and complete the knowledge transfer from the outgoing US engineering team; ensure the Serbia team independently owns operations and on-call by end of year - Be the primary point of contact for operational health — own incident response processes, escalation paths, and on-call for the Serbia team - Manage stakeholder relationships across security, product, infrastructure, data privacy, and partner integration teams who rely on the identity platform - Partner with the Principal Architect and Director to shape technical strategy and participate meaningfully in architecture decisions - Set and maintain engineering standards: code review culture, documentation quality, alerting hygiene, and runbook reliability - Represent the team in cross-functional planning and architecture discussions Qualifications Required - 7+ years of engineering experience, with 3+ years as an Engineering Manager leading backend platform or infrastructure teams - Strong engineering background — you can read and reason about code, participate meaningfully in architecture reviews, and earn trust from senior engineers; this is not a pure process role - Solid understanding of identity and access management concepts: OAuth2, OIDC, authentication flows, token lifecycle, and access control models - Demonstrated ability to build a team from scratch — hiring, onboarding, and culture-setting - Experience managing through a knowledge transfer or system ownership transition - Experience coordinating with distributed teams across timezones - Strong written and verbal English communication Strongly Preferred - Experience with customer IAM platforms (distinct from workforce IAM — you understand the difference between managing employee access and managing customer identities at scale) - Familiarity with authorization policy frameworks beyond basic RBAC (fine-grained authorization, ReBAC, ABAC) - Experience with AWS services and Kubernetes-deployed backends - Python background — you can read production code, participate in code review, and hold substantive technical conversations with your engineers - Experience managing stakeholders with competing priorities across security, product, and infrastructure Nice to have - Background in automotive, IoT, or connected consumer product companies - Familiarity with privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA) and their engineering implications - Exposure to AI agent identity or authorization for agentic systems Equal Opportunity Rivian is an equal opportunity employer and complies with all applicable federal, state, and local fair employment practices laws. 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. Rivian 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 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 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) recordkeeping; (vi) ensuring network and information security and preventing fraud; and (vii) as otherwise required or permitted by applicable law. Rivian 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 affiliates; and (iii) Rivian’s service providers, including providers of background checks, staffing services, and cloud services. Rivian may transfer or store internationally your Candidate Personal Data, including to or in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, 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. Please note that we are currently not accepting applications from third party application services. - Lead, grow, and develop a team of engineers working on Rivian's customer identity platform - Drive hiring, onboarding, and culture-setting for the initial Serbia-based team - Own sprint planning, backlog prioritization, and delivery of the team's roadmap - Coordinate and complete the knowledge transfer from the outgoing US engineering team; ensure the Serbia team independently owns operations and on-call by end of year - Be the primary point of contact for operational health — own incident response processes, escalation paths, and on-call for the Serbia team - Manage stakeholder relationships across security, product, infrastructure, data privacy, and partner integration teams who rely on the identity platform - Partner with the Principal Architect and Director to shape technical strategy and participate meaningfully in architecture decisions - Set and maintain engineering standards: code review culture, documentation quality, alerting hygiene, and runbook reliability - Represent the team in cross-functional planning and architecture discussions Required - 7+ years of engineering experience, with 3+ years as an Engineering Manager leading backend platform or infrastructure teams - Strong engineering background — you can read and reason about code, participate meaningfully in architecture reviews, and earn trust from senior engineers; this is not a pure process role - Solid understanding of identity and access management concepts: OAuth2, OIDC, authentication flows, token lifecycle, and access control models - Demonstrated ability to build a team from scratch — hiring, onboarding, and culture-setting - Experience managing through a knowledge transfer or system ownership transition - Experience coordinating with distributed teams across timezones - Strong written and verbal English communication Strongly Preferred - Experience with customer IAM platforms (distinct from workforce IAM — you understand the difference between managing employee access and managing customer identities at scale) - Familiarity with authorization policy frameworks beyond basic RBAC (fine-grained authorization, ReBAC, ABAC) - Experience with AWS services and Kubernetes-deployed backends - Python background — you can read production code, participate in code review, and hold substantive technical conversations with your engineers - Experience managing stakeholders with competing priorities across security, product, and infrastructure Nice to have - Background in automotive, IoT, or connected consumer product companies - Familiarity with privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA) and their engineering implications - Exposure to AI agent identity or authorization for agentic systems