Rivian‘s VP of Enterprise Technology Sridhar Thati has exited the EV maker after three and a half years to join cloud data platform Snowflake.
Thati, who joined the brand in February 2023 from its Palo Alto’s offices, disclosed the move in a LinkedIn post published over the weekend, in which he thanked the team’s IT and software leadership.
“Deep gratitude for the Rivian chapter, genuinely one of the most meaningful of my career,” he wrote, signaling out Diane Lye, Wassym Bensaid and Gerard Dwyer.
Diane Lye served as Rivian‘s first Chief Information Officer, hired from Capital One in October 2022 to build the company’s global IT infrastructure. She has since left the company, having retired.
Wassym Bensaid is Rivian‘s Chief Software Officer and co-CEO of the Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies joint venture, established in November 2024.
Gerard Dwyer, a former Waymo Chief Financial Officer who joined Rivian as VP of Business Finance in 2021, was promoted to Chief Information Officer in April 2025 — effectively replacing Lye and inheriting oversight of the enterprise technology organization Thati operated within.
At the EV maker, Thati led global teams responsible for enterprise software applications, AI-driven solutions, factory IT operations, and the enterprise technology infrastructure that supported Rivian‘s core business functions — from supply chain and finance to manufacturing and product development.
His scope also included overseeing critical platforms such as SAP, Workday, Dassault Systèmes, Autodesk and Siemens.
Software Teams
Thati’s enterprise technology portfolio included Rivian‘s Belgrade, Serbia, development center — the company’s largest non-US office.
The Irvine-headquartered company opened the tech center in December 2022 as its first location outside North America, with an initial target of 200 engineers and ambitions to reach 1,200 over time.
The facility focuses on vehicle software, infotainment, advanced driver assistance systems and IT services.
By the end of 2025, the Belgrade team had grown from 15 employees to 383, according to the company’s annual report filed in February.
Rivian also operates engineering teams in Lund, Sweden — home to ‘A Better Routeplanner’, acquired in 2023 — and opened an AI and autonomous driving hub in London a year ago.
Around seven months ago, Thati posted on LinkedIn that he was hiring a Director of Software Engineering to lead his team in Serbia, a role that would have reported into his enterprise technology organization.
Earlier LinkedIn posts from Thati also advertised openings for a Senior Director of Cloud and Infrastructure Engineering in the Bay Area and a Director of Enterprise and Factory IT Operations based in Normal, Illinois — the site of Rivian‘s sole manufacturing plant — with Atlanta also considered.
Rivian‘s careers page currently lists multiple software engineering roles in Belgrade, including positions in autonomy infrastructure, DevOps, consumer platform development, supply chain software and identity platform engineering.
The Belgrade office is also home to engineers working within Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies, the $5.8 billion joint venture developing a shared software platform.
A Pattern of Executive Turnover
Thati’s departure adds to a list of senior exits at Rivian over the past two years.
In 2024, the company lost four C-level executives in less than two months, including its Chief Accounting Officer, Chief Commercial Officer, Chief Communications Officer and VP of Manufacturing Operations.
In early 2025, SVP of Vehicle Programs DJ Novotney was quietly removed from the leadership page after spending 14 months in the role.
Rivian has also made several senior hires to backfill departures and prepare for the R2 launch.
The company appointed Michael Schwaeble as VP of Logistics earlier this year, created a Chief Customer Officer role filled by Greg Revelle in January, and named Sreela Venkataratnam — a former Tesla VP of Finance — as Chief Accounting Officer a year ago.
The Make-or-Break Model
Thati also noted a personal send-off from the company, saying that “the best parting gift I could have asked for is in my driveway, a launch edition R2 :)”
The R2 Launch Edition is the first trim of the midsize SUV that Rivian has called the most important product in its history.
Priced from $57,990, the R2 Performance with Launch Package pairs dual-motor all-wheel drive producing 656 horsepower and 609 pound-feet of torque with a zero-to-60-mph time of 3.6 seconds and an EPA-estimated range of up to 330 miles from an 87.9-kWh battery.
Rivian began external deliveries on June 9 after months of employee handovers, and has since assigned more than 5,000 VINs.
Less expensive configurations will follow.
The R2 Premium at $53,990 is due to begin deliveries before the year end, despite the founder and CEO RJ Scaringe mentioning on July 30 that both upcoming trims would only arrive next year.
The Standard trim is planned for the first half of 2027.
Rivian‘s Normal, Illinois, plant currently runs a single shift for the R2, with a second planned for the final weeks of the third quarter — and a third for 2027.
The facility has capacity for up to 215,000 vehicles annually, including 155,000 R2 units.
The company raised its full-year 2026 delivery guidance to 65,000–70,000 vehicles alongside its Q2 earnings results, up from a prior range of 62,000 to 67,000.
