How Rivian Interviews in 2026: Process, Questions & What They Score

1. 01

   Number of Islands (grid graph traversal).

   Tests BFS or DFS over a 2D grid with a visited set to count connected components.

2. 02

   Basic Calculator II: evaluate an arithmetic expression string.

   Tests stack-based expression parsing that handles operator precedence in a single pass.

3. 03

   Implement an LRU cache.

   Tests combining a hash map with a doubly linked list to get O(1) get and put.

4. 04

   Compute a moving average over a stream of sensor data within a time window.

   Tests a sliding time window with a queue that evicts old readings and keeps a running sum.

5. 05

   Parse a VIN (string manipulation).

   Tests careful parsing of a fixed-format identifier string and its edge cases.

6. 06

   Rotate String.

   Tests rotation checks on strings, such as searching the doubled string or shifting manually.

7. 07

   Merge K Sorted Lists.

   Tests a min-heap or divide-and-conquer merge of k sorted lists in O(N log k).

8. 08

   SQL: write a rolling-average or fleet-utilization query over vehicle data.

   Tests SQL window functions for rolling averages and aggregating utilization over time.

Reported problems, listed so you know what to expect. Practice them in your own editor or on the platform you prefer; SupaCV's practice mode coaches how you talk through them.

1. 01

   Design an over-the-air (OTA) software update system that pushes firmware to a fleet of vehicles, handling connectivity loss, staged rollouts and rollback.

   Tests staged rollout, versioning, failure handling and rollback for fleet updates over unreliable links.

2. 02

   Design a real-time vehicle telemetry pipeline that ingests sensor data from a large fleet and makes it available for analysis.

   Tests streaming ingestion, buffering, partitioning and storage choices for high-volume sensor data.

3. 03

   Follow-up: what happens when a vehicle loses connectivity (for example in a tunnel) or reconnects after a week offline, and how do you deduplicate resent batches?

   Tests offline buffering, idempotent ingestion and deduplication of resent telemetry batches.

4. 04

   Design the backend for a charging network: station status and availability, session start and stop, billing and route planning.

   Tests modeling of station state, the charging session lifecycle and billing consistency across services.

5. 05

   Design a system that watches battery data across the fleet and flags degrading packs for service.

   Tests time-series storage and trend or anomaly detection to flag degrading battery packs.

6. 06

   Low-level design: model a vehicle state machine, or a simplified vehicle battery monitoring service with its class structure and edge cases.

   Tests class design, a state machine and edge cases for a vehicle battery monitoring service.

7. 07

   Model a vehicle component hierarchy using object-oriented design principles.

   Tests object-oriented modeling, such as inheritance versus composition for vehicle components.

Reported problems, listed so you know what to expect. Practice them in your own editor or on the platform you prefer; SupaCV's practice mode coaches how you talk through them.

1. 01

   Given a set of driving capabilities, how would you choose the types and placement of sensors needed to support them?

   Tests mapping driving capabilities to sensor coverage, redundancy and placement trade-offs.

2. 02

   What are the external failure modes of a camera, and how would you design a feature that reports when the camera is blocked?

   Tests failure-mode analysis of a camera and designing a blockage detection feature.

3. 03

   A signal produces a false positive once every hour. How would you work with a technician to find and fix the bug as quickly as possible?

   Tests debugging an intermittent fault with logging, hypotheses and a technician.

4. 04

   Go into technical detail on one of your projects. What is your high-voltage experience?

   Tests depth on a past project and hands-on exposure to high-voltage systems.

5. 05

   Walk through a tolerance stack-up across a mating interface. When would you run it radially rather than linearly?

   Tests tolerance stack-up analysis at a mating interface and when a radial stack applies instead of a linear one.

6. 06

   Your CAE model and a physical test disagree. How do you find out which one is wrong?

   Tests correlating a CAE model with physical test data by checking inputs, boundary conditions and test setup.

7. 07

   How would you characterize thermal runaway propagation in a module, and how would you mitigate it?

   Tests thermal runaway propagation testing in a module and mitigation such as barriers and venting.

8. 08

   A plant is scrapping HV battery assemblies. How do you tell a design problem from a process problem?

   Tests root-cause analysis separating design causes from process causes using scrap data and process capability.

9. 09

   Embedded fundamentals: what is a CAN bus, how do interrupts work, and how do you test code that talks to hardware?

   Tests embedded basics: CAN bus communication, interrupt handling and testing hardware-facing code.

Reported problems, listed so you know what to expect. Practice them in your own editor or on the platform you prefer; SupaCV's practice mode coaches how you talk through them.

1. 01

   Why Rivian, and why this team in particular?

2. 02

   Tell me about yourself and why you are interested in working at Rivian.

3. 03

   What is your experience with electric vehicles?

4. 04

   How do you stay up-to-date on the latest trends in the EV industry?

5. 05

   What do you know about R2, and how could your work support it?

6. 06

   What are your strengths and weaknesses?

7. 07

   Describe a time when you had to overcome a challenge at work.

8. 08

   Walk me through a hard problem you solved: the problem, your solution and its impact.

9. 09

   Tell me about a result you delivered with others that you could not have delivered alone.

10. 10

    Describe a situation where you brought together people with conflicting perspectives.

11. 11

    Describe a time you asked why and it changed the direction of the work.

12. 12

    Tell me about a time new information changed your view on a decision.

13. 13

    How do you keep your own work aligned with the wider priorities of the business?

14. 14

    Describe a time you went beyond what was asked for a customer or a teammate.

15. 15

    Tell me about a time you had to make a bold technical decision with incomplete information.

16. 16

    Tell me about a time you worked in an area that was new to you. How did you get up to speed?

17. 17

    Tell me about a mistake you made and what you changed afterwards.

18. 18

    Tell me about a time you had to deliver against a tight deadline.

19. 19

    How would you explain a technical decision to someone outside your field?

20. 20

    How do you explain your past work without revealing a former employer's confidential information?