Lead, Program Management, Commercial Development

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 Rivian is on a mission to keep the world adventurous forever. This requires a robust, world-class infrastructure of sales and service co-locations that allow our customers to engage with our brand and maintain their vehicles seamlessly. While this is an individual contributor role, you will serve as a program management partner to the Regional Development Leads (RDL) and cross-functional stakeholders. This role is responsible for coordinating recurring reviews, consolidating development inputs, preparing approval materials, and tracking follow-through across Finance, BizOps, and regional teams to support the expansion of our physical footprint across North America and Europe. You will report directly to the Sr. Director of Real Estate and Commercial Development. Responsibilities Data Synthesis: Act as the central point of contact for RDLs to collect, validate, distill, and prioritize site-specific development data (scope, schedule, and budget). Turn disparate regional updates into a single source of truth. Stakeholder Management & POC: Establish, organize, and lead high-stakes review meetings. You will facilitate discussions between Development, Finance, and BizOps to secure formal approvals for new and remodel projects—building agendas, ensuring the right stakeholders are in the room, documenting action items, and driving follow-ups to closure. Financial & Strategic Planning: Partner closely with Finance and BizOps to drive and maintain the recurring quarterly forecasting process. This role takes ownership of the maintenance of the evolving business plan to ensure all partners are aligned with the latest changes while helping to build and refine long-term strategies that match Rivian’s aggressive growth targets. Prepare program-wide status reports for executive leadership. Full-Lifecycle Program Management: Maintain program-level visibility into the commercial development pipeline by tracking milestone status, dependencies, risks, approval readiness, and critical cross-functional deliverables. Process Optimization: Own and continuously improve the execution-layer processes governing the commercial pipeline (gate communications, AEOR/GC vendor coordination, construction-phase handoffs, and close-out). You will maintain templates and refine workflows so the program runs with less coordination overhead quarter over quarter. Note: For deep infrastructure gaps (tools, design standards), you will partner with Centralized Facilities, but execution-layer ownership lives here. Operational Coordination: Resolve ambiguous requests by mapping scope allocation, routing decisions to the right owners, and ensuring cross-functional action items are closed out swiftly. Contractor & Third-Party Management: Oversee the lifecycle of third-party personnel and consultants. Partner with RDLs and Centralized teams to vet and onboard external project management firms, audit their performance against KPIs, and manage the approval process. How Success is Measured (KPIs) In this role, your impact will be directly tied to the efficiency, predictability, and fiscal health of our development pipeline. Key performance indicators include: Portfolio Budget Management: Optimizing and tracking total program spend across all active projects against the approved aggregate portfolio budget. Stakeholder Throughput & Efficiency: Accelerating the average time it takes for projects to secure formal cross-functional approvals. This includes measuring agility during business-driven program changes (e.g., L2 charging quantity adjustments) by tracking the average cycle time from initial request ingestion to final site implementation. Schedule Milestone Predictability: Improving long-term planning accuracy by measuring and closing the gap between overall G5 milestone actuals against original G2 forecasts. Qualifications Experience: 5+ years of dedicated Program Management experience, specifically within commercial real estate, retail construction, or multi-site rollouts/development. Operational Rigor: You are a "data whisperer" who can consolidate complex information into a cohesive narrative. You are highly organized, detail-oriented, and able to track multiple parallel workstreams without losing momentum. Executive Presence: Proven ability to influence, navigate complex approval hierarchies, and gain buy-in from senior leaders in Finance and Operations. Communication: Exceptional written and verbal communication skills. You know how to run an efficient meeting, command a room, and distill complex project updates into clear action items. Global Mindset: Experience or comfort navigating differing regulatory, zoning, and construction environments across both North America and Europe. Technical Tools: Advanced proficiency in data visualization and project management tools (e.g., Google Suite, Databricks, Hex, Autodesk Construction Cloud / ACC). The Rivian Fit: You are adaptable, thrive in high-growth/ambiguous environments, and are deeply passionate about the transition to sustainable energy. Pay Disclosure The salary range for this role is $114,100 - $142,600 for Atlanta based applicants. This is the lowest to highest salary we in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. An employee’s position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to, specific competencies, relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, shift, and organizational needs. The successful candidate may be eligible for annual performance bonus and equity awards. We offer a comprehensive package of benefits for full-time and part-time employees, their spouse or domestic partner, and children up to age 26, including but not limited to paid vacation, paid sick leave, and a competitive portfolio of insurance benefits including life, medical, dental, vision, short-term disability insurance, and long-term disability insurance to eligible employees. You may also have the opportunity to participate in Rivian’s 401(k) Plan and Employee Stock Purchase Program if you meet certain eligibility requirements. Full-time employee coverage is effective on their first day of employment. Part-time employee coverage is effective the first of the month following 90 days of employment. More information about benefits is available at rivianbenefits.com. 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. Data Synthesis: Act as the central point of contact for RDLs to collect, validate, distill, and prioritize site-specific development data (scope, schedule, and budget). Turn disparate regional updates into a single source of truth. Stakeholder Management & POC: Establish, organize, and lead high-stakes review meetings. You will facilitate discussions between Development, Finance, and BizOps to secure formal approvals for new and remodel projects—building agendas, ensuring the right stakeholders are in the room, documenting action items, and driving follow-ups to closure. Financial & Strategic Planning: Partner closely with Finance and BizOps to drive and maintain the recurring quarterly forecasting process. This role takes ownership of the maintenance of the evolving business plan to ensure all partners are aligned with the latest changes while helping to build and refine long-term strategies that match Rivian’s aggressive growth targets. Prepare program-wide status reports for executive leadership. Full-Lifecycle Program Management: Maintain program-level visibility into the commercial development pipeline by tracking milestone status, dependencies, risks, approval readiness, and critical cross-functional deliverables. Process Optimization: Own and continuously improve the execution-layer processes governing the commercial pipeline (gate communications, AEOR/GC vendor coordination, construction-phase handoffs, and close-out). You will maintain templates and refine workflows so the program runs with less coordination overhead quarter over quarter. Note: For deep infrastructure gaps (tools, design standards), you will partner with Centralized Facilities, but execution-layer ownership lives here. Operational Coordination: Resolve ambiguous requests by mapping scope allocation, routing decisions to the right owners, and ensuring cross-functional action items are closed out swiftly. Contractor & Third-Party Management: Oversee the lifecycle of third-party personnel and consultants. Partner with RDLs and Centralized teams to vet and onboard external project management firms, audit their performance against KPIs, and manage the approval process. How Success is Measured (KPIs) In this role, your impact will be directly tied to the efficiency, predictability, and fiscal health of our development pipeline. Key performance indicators include: Portfolio Budget Management: Optimizing and tracking total program spend across all active projects against the approved aggregate portfolio budget. Stakeholder Throughput & Efficiency: Accelerating the average time it takes for projects to secure formal cross-functional approvals. This includes measuring agility during business-driven program changes (e.g., L2 charging quantity adjustments) by tracking the average cycle time from initial request ingestion to final site implementation. Schedule Milestone Predictability: Improving long-term planning accuracy by measuring and closing the gap between overall G5 milestone actuals against original G2 forecasts. Experience: 5+ years of dedicated Program Management experience, specifically within commercial real estate, retail construction, or multi-site rollouts/development. Operational Rigor: You are a "data whisperer" who can consolidate complex information into a cohesive narrative. You are highly organized, detail-oriented, and able to track multiple parallel workstreams without losing momentum. Executive Presence: Proven ability to influence, navigate complex approval hierarchies, and gain buy-in from senior leaders in Finance and Operations. Communication: Exceptional written and verbal communication skills. You know how to run an efficient meeting, command a room, and distill complex project updates into clear action items. Global Mindset: Experience or comfort navigating differing regulatory, zoning, and construction environments across both North America and Europe. Technical Tools: Advanced proficiency in data visualization and project management tools (e.g., Google Suite, Databricks, Hex, Autodesk Construction Cloud / ACC). The Rivian Fit: You are adaptable, thrive in high-growth/ambiguous environments, and are deeply passionate about the transition to sustainable energy.