Sr. Electronics Design and Characterization Engineer (InfoConn) at Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies in Palo Alto, CA

Job description

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 Electronics Test and Validation team owns the module-level validation testing for all RV Tech electronic control units (ECUs). It is our responsibility to make sure RV Tech electronics are designed and manufactured correctly. With this goal in mind, we develop scalable tools, processes, hardware, and software solutions deployed for characterization, validation, and manufacturing. In this role, you will be a key individual contributor driving both design review and hardware characterization for vehicle electronics, with a particular focus on Infotainment & Connectivity (InfoConn) ECUs. You are not just assessing finished boards—you will actively review schematics alongside the EE design team early in the cycle, providing critical feedback to optimize the design and architect best-in-class verification methods. These ECUs are defined by SoC-class silicon, dense multi-rail power delivery, high-speed serial interfaces, and integrated wireless radios, so characterizing them means working across power integrity, signal integrity, RF performance, and thermal behavior on the same board. You'll work cross functionally to ensure that our electronics are designed to meet module-level requirements. Responsibilities • Develop detailed design verification and characterization test plans and test requirements for all phases of ECU programs, with input from reliability, design, RF, and firmware teams. • Execute characterization testing plans according to project milestones. • Own test coverage reports and analysis. • Perform bench-level characterization at IC and PCBA levels, including multi-rail power sequencing and PMIC behavior, rail transient response and ripple, load step response, inrush, power-state transitions (sleep/suspend/wake), quiescent and standby current, brownout and power-interrupt thresholds, and thermal throttling behavior. • Characterize high-speed interfaces at the ECU connector: camera and display serdes links (GMSL, FPD-Link), USB, PCIe, Automotive Ethernet (100BASE-T1/1000BASE-T1/multi-gig), and debug interfaces — including eye diagrams, jitter, BER, link margin, and link training behavior over voltage and temperature. • Characterize the conducted RF performance of integrated radios — Wi-Fi, Bluetooth/BLE, cellular (LTE/5G), UWB, NFC, and GNSS — covering TX power and spectral quality, RX sensitivity, spurious emissions, and desense/coexistence between radios and against on-board digital and switching noise sources. • Lead the power integrity and coexistence/desense characterization efforts for InfoConn ECUs, including correlation of measured behavior back to design intent and layout. • Characterize protection and fault behavior: over-voltage and under-voltage, reverse polarity, load dump, interface short and disconnect conditions, storage and memory stress, and verification that the ECU reports the correct diagnostics and recovers as designed. • Provide early feedback to design engineers regarding design decisions, testability, test point access, and instrumentation hooks needed for characterization. • Support creation and present Design for Testability (DFT) reports for ECU designs. • Follow characterization schedules and communicate status with upper management and cross-functional teams. • Write automation scripts and instrumentation drivers to speed up characterization testing using