AI Agent Performance Lead
Software Engineering, Data Science
Irvine, CA, USA
USD 140,600-192,500 / year + Equity
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 refining its operating model for enterprise AI agents that engage customers intelligently at every milestone — from first inquiry through purchase and ownership. This role serves as the platform owner and architect for conversational AI, defining, testing, evaluating, and optimizing agent behaviors to drive measurable sales outcomes. Across the customer org, setting org-wide strategy and standards across multiple teams/platforms with broad authority and being recognized as the functional authority beyond one domain.
Embedded within the Sales organization, this role bridges sales enablement and AI execution. You will own the conversation logic, customer-journey mapping, and performance optimization of AI agents across customer touchpoints.
This role is distinct from backend engineering. Commercial Technology owns platform architecture, API integrations, security, and data access. You will translate those capabilities into sales value by designing agent behaviors, improving prompts and tool-calling logic, evaluating agent performance, and iterating based on commercial outcomes.
At the intersection of sales strategy and engineering, you will analyze conversation transcripts to identify failure points, investigate LLM reasoning and agent behavior, recommend improvements to agent instructions, and architect the measurement framework that demonstrates impact. Ultimately, you will establish the discipline, measurement, and cross-functional operating model required to scale Sierra AI as a trusted, high-performing sales platform.
Responsibilities
- Define conversation logic, decision policies, and behavioral guardrails (including safety, privacy, and brand tone) for AI agents across customer scenarios and journeys, enabling reliable, effective behavior at scale.
- Map customer journeys through the agent: define decision points, routing logic, qualification criteria, and handoff conditions that optimize for lead quality, conversion, and customer experience.
- Define the metrics that matter for agent performance: conversation completion rates, lead quality scores, customer satisfaction, routing accuracy, time-to-resolution, and impact on sales pipeline.
- Partner with Analytics/Commercial Technology to build dashboards that surface agent performance at multiple levels: daily operations view, weekly performance trends, and monthly business impact analysis. Ensure data pipelines capture the signals needed to measure agent effectiveness.
- Present channel performance, risk, and roadmap updates in a recurring cadence (e.g. weekly ops review, monthly business review), translating technical detail (model behavior, evaluation results, experimentation outcomes) into clear, decision-ready narratives for an executive audience.
- Diagnose model behavior, tool-use failures, instruction conflicts, and workflow breakdowns using transcripts and evaluation data.
- Run A/B tests on agent behavior changes; measure impact on conversation quality, customer satisfaction, lead routing accuracy, and sales outcomes.
- Treat agent optimization as a continuous process, not a one-time build. Conduct regular analysis of agent conversations: sample and review transcripts to identify patterns, assess quality, understand failure modes, and surface improvement opportunities. Translate agent limitations into product requirements; prioritize based on business impact.
- Serve as the primary escalation point for agent-related issues, coordinating cross-functional triage and root cause analysis.
- Communicate with field teams (sales, customer support) and cross-functional stakeholders to understand what improvements would have the most impact.
- Drive progress in ambiguous, cross-functional environments and remove barriers to execution through clear decisions, ownership, and communication.
Qualifications
- 7+ years of technical sales/revenue operations experience, or software engineering, or AI operations, with proficiency in TypeScript or JavaScript (Node.js).
- Hands-on experience evaluating LLMs, understanding how models reason and fail.
- Comfortable reading REST API specs and working with JSON Schemas provided by technical teams.
- Ability to translate business goals (lead qualification, response time reduction, conversion) into deterministic agent code.
- Deep understanding of sales funnels, customer journeys, frontline workflows, and the operational levers that influence conversion and customer satisfaction.
- Strong executive presence required with experience successfully presenting and distilling complex concepts for a C-suite audience.
- Experience explaining technical concepts (prompting, tool calling, model behavior) to non-technical stakeholders and vice versa.
- Exceptional conversational writing skills: able to craft concise, natural, and persuasive dialogue that aligns with brand tone and voice.
- Demonstrated ability to define product strategy and translate ambiguous business problems into prioritized roadmaps and executable requirements.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with agent frameworks (LangChain, CrewAI, or similar) or building multi-step reasoning systems.
- Background in product operations, sales engineering, or customer success—roles where you've had to understand both the technical side and the commercial impact.
- Familiarity with sales tech stack tools (e.g., Salesforce, HubSpot, Gong, Outreach, Chili Piper).
- Experience with state machine design or conversational UX frameworks.
- Basic working knowledge of Python for data processing or evaluation scripting.
- Exposure to automotive, retail, or direct-to-consumer sales environments.
Pay Disclosure
The salary range for this role is $154,000 to $192,500 for SoCal and $140,600 to $175,000 for Georgia 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.
You can apply for this role through careers.rivian.com (or through internal-careers-rivian.icims.com if you are a current employee). This job is not expected to be closed any sooner than 9-16-26.
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 and Technology
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.
How We Use AI in Our Hiring Process: To ensure transparency, we want candidates to know that Rivian uses iCIMS Talent Cloud Artificial Intelligence (TCAI) and AI-enabled tools to assist with screening, reviewing, organizing and highlighting profiles and applications that match the key requirements for each role.
Participation in AI profile matching is entirely voluntary. If you prefer that your profile not be used in this process, you can opt out at any time. Opting out means your profile will be excluded from automated matching and will not be surfaced for additional roles through this system. Your current application remains active and will not be affected in any way.
Please note that we are currently not accepting applications from third party application services.