Materials Engineer, Adhesives and Sealing

Role details

Adhesives and sealants hold Rivian vehicles together and keep water, dust, and fluids out of the battery, cabin, and electronics. As a Materials Engineer in the Failure Analysis and Materials Engineering team, you will work directly with our technical leads to qualify new adhesives and sealants, solve bonding and sealing issues, and turn test data into the specifications our engineers design and build to. In addition, you will work alongside with other subject matter experts in varieties of materials technologies and analytical techniques that share the same desire for adventures.

This is a hands-on, lab-first role. Most of your week will be spent designing test plans, preparing specimens, running mechanical, thermal, and environmental tests, and reporting what the data says. Your work will reach every emission-free electric adventure vehicle, including R1, R2, and Commercial Van, to charging hardware, and accessories, and your curiosity, skills and dedication will help drive Rivan towards its goal of preserving the natural world for generations to come.

• Plan and run laboratory testing of structural and semi-structural adhesives, pumpable sealants, formed-in-place and pre-cut gaskets, potting compounds, and thermally conductive adhesives and gap fillers used across battery, body, closures, electronics, and charging hardware.
• Execute mechanical testing at the material and joint level, including lap shear, peel, tensile and elongation, hardness, compression set, and compression stress relaxation.
• Characterize cure, thermal, and chemical behavior with DSC, TGA, DMA, FTIR, and rheometry, and relate the results to processing windows and long-term performance.
• Run environmental and durability aging (heat, humidity, thermal shock, fluid resistance, and cyclic corrosion such as SAE J2334) and component-level sealing tests, including leak and pressure-decay testing and ingress protection to ISO 20653 (IP67, IP6K9K).
• Qualify new materials and alternate sources: build test plans with DOE where it adds value, test against Rivian material specifications, write qualification reports, and support engineering approval through the Rivian design process.
• Support failure analysis of bond and seal failures across prototype builds, design validation, supplier development, launch, quality alerts, and field returns. Classify failure modes (adhesive, cohesive, substrate, mixed), cross-section and image failed joints (optical microscopy, SEM/EDS), and document root-cause evidence for containment and corrective action.
• Keep test data accurate and accessible in Rivian’s materials database, and provide material property data for CAE and material card development.
• Present results clearly to technical leads in materials engineering, design, manufacturing, quality, and supplier teams through concise test reports and review decks.
• Own day-to-day lab execution: fixture design, specimen preparation procedures, equipment upkeep and calibration, and safe chemical handling.
• Support the technical lead(s) in Materials Engineering and work with manufacturing and supplier quality on dispense, cure, and bead inspection, and evaluate how surface preparation and contamination affect adhesion using methods such as contact angle and surface energy measurement.
• Support the technical lead(s) in Materials Engineering and work with adhesive and sealant suppliers, Tier 1s, and third-party labs to request samples, review data sheets and test reports, and resolve gaps against Rivian requirements.

• B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Polymer Science, Chemistry, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field.
• Hands-on experience with mechanical testing of polymers on a universal testing frame (Instron, MTS, ZwickRoell, or similar), including fixturing and specimen preparation.
• Working experience with: DSC, TGA, DMA, FTIR, rheometry, optical microscopy, SEM/EDS.
• Solid grounding in polymer fundamentals: thermoset cure chemistry (epoxy, polyurethane, acrylic, silicone, silane-modified polymer), glass transition, viscoelasticity, and how temperature, humidity, and chemical exposure degrade adhesion and seal performance.
• Understanding of adhesion failure modes and the role of surface preparation in bond durability.
• Clear technical writing: test plans, lab procedures, reports, and specifications.
• Data analysis in Python, JMP, Minitab, or equivalent, with working knowledge of basic statistics and design of experiments.
• Comfort spending most of the workday in a laboratory environment, handling chemicals safely and following lab safety practices.
• Ability to manage several test programs at once and communicate status and results to engineers across functions.
• The desire to create a respectful, fun, inclusive, and inspiring team and company culture.

Preferred Qualifications

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• B.S. with 1+ years of relevant industry experience in materials engineering or materials testing, or an M.S. with hands-on research in polymers, adhesion, or materials characterization.
• Experience with adhesives or sealants in automotive, aerospace, consumer electronics, or heavy equipment, such as structural bonding of aluminum, steel, and composites, battery pack sealing, potting and encapsulation, or thermal gap fillers.
• Familiarity with ASTM, ISO, and SAE test standards for adhesives and elastomers, and with OEM material specification formats (for example GMW, Ford WSS, or VW TL/PV).
• Experience with environmental chambers, cyclic corrosion, ingress protection, or leak testing at the component or vehicle level.
• Exposure to dispense and cure processes, including meter-mix equipment, robotic bead dispense, UV or induction cure, and vision-based bead inspection.
• Experience with failure analysis tools such as cross-sectioning, SEM/EDS, and X-ray or CT inspection.
• Exposure to hyperelastic or viscoelastic material characterization for CAE, or material card development in Abaqus or LS-DYNA.
• Familiarity with DFMEA and PFMEA, 8D problem solving, and APQP/PPAP.
• Experience working with material suppliers or third-party test labs.