Multiple rounds of personal and technical questions via email before the interview. They gave feedback on areas that they did not agree but question were open ended making it easy to not answer what they were really asking in the later rounds.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Thanks for applying to Rivan! I’m interested to know:
Generally:
What's your realm of genius - i.e the area you're best at / want to do more work in?
What you think our biggest engineering issues are (knowing our system on a high-level)?
Whether you have any personal projects you've tinkered on / built? Can be anything - just not uni / work related.
Technically:
How might you go about designing a factory-based system to assemble, program/configure, and deploy the embedded systems 100 Rivan systems a year? Requirements: automate functionality and safety tests; ensure traceability of parts, tests conducted, and software loaded; ensure integrity of embedded systems (i.e., known-good hardware and software used); ensure system is provisioned for remote, autonomous actions.
Suppose you had a fleet of off-grid synthetic gas plants that communicate back to a fleet management system. This system requires >90% communications uptime and provides near real-time performance and operational data back to a server, and can receive commands from the server to adjust key operational parameters (e.g. hydrogen production, target battery charge state). How would your system handle lost data and ensure secured access to command the systems?
Please be specific about technologies you might consider for these solutions, and use diagram(s) where appropriate.
I applied online. I interviewed at Rivan Industries in Apr 2026
Interview
Applied online and then supplied some supplementary questions. Had a 30 minute intro interview with the Head of Ops which was interesting as they covered why they needed the role and explored some of my thinking to the bullets in the JD. Only comment is that they took longer than they said getting back to me.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What's the hardest thing about growing out an organisation?