Eric Hulser, a senior software director at the joint venture between Rivian and Volkswagen Group, has joined General Motors as Executive Director after six years at the EV maker and the venture, he said on Wednesday.
“After six years at Rivian and Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies, I’ve decided to move onto my next adventure,” he wrote on LinkedIn.
He said he will lead GM’s Vehicle Software Integrity & Delivery organization.
The role is “focused on making software-defined GM products ready through trusted, end-to-end systems that help validate software, establish known-good states, deliver through the right paths, and learn from what happens across engineering, factory, OTA, dealer, service, and the vehicle itself,” Hulser wrote.
Six Years
Hulser joined Rivian in June 2020 as Director, Vehicle Applications, according to his profile. He became Senior Director, Vehicle, Fleet and Factory Applications in January 2024.
Hulser moved to the joint venture, known as RV Tech, in December 2024 as Senior Director, Connected Services & Infrastructure.
In his post, Hulser said he helped “build and lead teams across embedded and smart diagnostics, OTA, factory systems, vehicle cloud and fleet management, big data and AI, developer experience, and service tooling”.
He thanked Rivian Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe and Wassym Bensaid, saying he “had the privilege of reporting to” both.
Bensaid is Rivian’s Chief Software Officer and co-Chief Executive Officer of the joint venture alongside Volkswagen’s Carsten Helbing.
“Rivian gave me the opportunity to work on hard problems with people who care deeply about the product, the customer, and the mission,” Hulser wrote.
“I’m proud of what we built together, and I’ll be cheering for the team as Rivian continues to bring its vision to life,” he added.
Before Rivian, Hulser was an Engineering Lead at Waymo from May 2019 to June 2020.
There he led the software team for hardware test infrastructure on the company’s autonomous driving sensor system, according to his profile.
Before Waymo, he spent 10 months at Byton as Senior Manager, Application Development, with a focus on cloud services, smart diagnostics and factory integration teams, the profile shows.
He worked at Tesla from January 2013 to August 2018, first as Staff Software Engineer and then as Manager, Software Engineering.
His profile says he led development of a diagnostics system used by Tesla’s manufacturing, service and root cause analysis teams, and managed teams that peaked at 22 members.
The Venture He Leaves
Rivian and Volkswagen launched the joint venture in November 2024 in a deal the companies valued at up to $5.8 billion.
The venture develops the electrical architecture and software for both companies’ future electric vehicles.
Its teams were initially based in Palo Alto, and the companies said three other sites were in development in North America and Europe.
The companies said at the time that the first Volkswagen Group models using the technology were expected as early as 2027.
Winter testing of the venture’s technology unlocked a further $1 billion of Volkswagen’s planned investment in Rivian this year.
RV Tech hired Manasi Vartak as VP of AI and Data in April.
Hulser’s exit comes weeks before another change at Rivian, where Chief Financial Officer Claire McDonough is due to leave on October 30 to join GE Vernova.
GM’s Software Rebuild
In his post, Hulser thanked Sterling Anderson and Ed Nightingale “for the opportunity and the warm welcome”.
Anderson is GM’s Executive VP, Global Product and Chief Product Officer.
He oversees the product lifecycle for gas and electric vehicles, including hardware, software, services and user experience, according to GM.
Anderson co-founded self-driving truck company Aurora and previously led the team that delivered Tesla Autopilot, according to his GM biography.
Nightingale is GM’s Vice President of Digital Products and Infrastructure.
He joined GM from Microsoft, where he was Vice President of Research, and previously worked at Apple as Engineering Director for Apple Cloud infrastructure, The Detroit News reported in November 2025.
GM brought vehicle software engineering and Global Product together under Anderson in early November 2025, after Dave Richardson, Senior Vice President of Software and Services Engineering, stepped down on October 31.
TechCrunch reported on November 26, 2025 that Barak Turovsky, hired that March as Head of AI, had also left and that Baris Cetinok, Senior Vice President of Software and Services Product Management, would leave on December 12.
GM said in October 2025 that it will launch a centralized computing platform and a next-generation electrical architecture across electric and gas-powered vehicles, starting with the Cadillac Escalade IQ in 2028.
The carmaker said the platform is designed to deliver 10 times more software updates for new features than its previous system.
More than 4.5 million GM vehicles could already receive over-the-air vehicle system updates at the time, a number the company said was growing by about 2 million a year.
“This is such an important moment for the automotive industry as a whole, as more and more companies pioneer the future into software defined and electric vehicles,” he wrote.
He said he wants to “further Mary Barra’s Zero, Zero, Zero vision”, a reference to the goal of zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion that GM’s Chair and Chief Executive Officer set out in October 2017.
“I’m looking forward to learning, building, and contributing in this next chapter,” Hulser wrote.
