The Symphony of a Software-Defined Vehicle: Heapspace Meetup powered by Rivian

If you’re interested in how software actually runs today’s vehicles, join us on February 26 at 6 PM for a panel organized in collaboration with Rivian, where engineers from Rivian and Rivian Volkswagen Group Technologies will share how software moves through a vehicle’s “nervous system” and why building a Software-Defined Vehicle is far more than just writing code.

Location: Rivian, Tadije Sondermajera 11, Airport City, 6th floor
Please note: This event will be held in Serbian.

>> Register here <<

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The traditional car is evolving from a mechanical machine into a living software ecosystem. At the Belgrade Tech Center of Rivian and Rivian Volkswagen Technologies, we are shifting the focus from horsepower and body design to what happens "under the hood" of modern mobility: the Software-Defined Vehicle. In our world, a vehicle’s lifecycle doesn’t end when it leaves the factory; it’s only the beginning.

This panel brings together the engineering females from our Belgrade hub who are architecting this future in real-time. We will explore how a single line of code travels through the vehicle’s "nervous system" - from raw sensor inputs and telematics to autonomous decision-making, finally manifesting as an intuitive interface for the driver. Our speakers will dive into the high-stakes world of safety-critical innovation, where functional safety meets premium user experience. Join us for a deep dive into the seamless integration of hundreds of processes that define the next generation of mobility, proving that a bug in this world is never just a glitch, but a mission-critical priority.

PANELISTS:

Lena Novovic | Senior Software Engineer for Camera Systems, Rivian & Volkswagen Technologies
Lena is a Senior Software Engineer specializing in camera systems and computer vision. Her journey began at the Faculty of Technical Sciences in Novi Sad, where a background in Biomedical Engineering sparked a lifelong passion for digital image processing.
With a foundation built at Continental Automotive working on Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), Lena later joined Rivian, where she now contributes to the Rivian and Volkswagen Technologies joint venture. Her expertise spans video encoding, streaming, and the development of intelligent computer vision applications. Recently promoted to Senior Engineer, she continues to lead innovation in vehicle security and real-time vision systems.

Nina Radaković | Product Designer, Rivian
Nina is a Product Designer specializing in design systems. Her path began at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences (FON), later complemented by a Master’s degree from the Faculty of Technical Sciences in Novi Sad. During five years at the startup Quantlabs, Nina helped build products from the ground up, ranging from fintech software to e-gaming platforms. Following a successful period as a freelancer, she joined Rivian, where she now focuses on creating scalable design frameworks. Outside of her primary career, she is an aerial acrobatics coach and a passionate polyglot with a deep interest in foreign languages.

Tijana Djordjevic | Senior Embedded Software Engineer, Rivian & Volkswagen Technologies
Tijana completed both her BSc and MSc degrees at the School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade. During her studies, she was a teaching assistant, she shared research at the conferences like ETRAN and PSSOH, and interned at NOFFZ-Forsteh working on software-defined radio for NI devices.This led to a role at RT-RK, where she developed software for digital television, gaining experience with drivers, secure integration, and system architecture. At Rivian, she built services and on-demand apps that use sensor data and algorithms to detect early faults and diagnose the health of car components. Currently, she handles telemetry by building apps on the edge that collect and send vehicle data to back-end systems for analysis.

Milka Jakovljevic | Staff Data Scientist Rivian & Volkswagen Technologies
Milka is a Staff Data Scientist, specializing in the end-to-end lifecycle of automotive telemetry data. With deep expertise in the ingestion, transformation, and analysis of real-time vehicle insights, she bridges the gap between raw signal data and actionable intelligence. She holds a BSc, MSc, and PhD from the School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Belgrade. Before transitioning into the corporate world, Milka spent 11 years as a researcher at the Institute of Physics in the field of Solid State Physics and New Materials. Joined Rivian in 2023, initially focusing on Supply Chain data analytics. In June 2024, transitioned to the Telematics and Processing Insights team to specialize in the ingestion, transformation, and analysis of high-frequency vehicle telemetry data.

Ksenija Milenkovic | Software Engineer, Autonomy, Rivian
Ksenija is a Software Engineer on Rivian's ADAS cloud platform team, where she develops ML-powered applications that support the autonomous driving stack. Before joining Rivian, she spent several years at an outsourcing company, working across diverse domains such as fintech platforms, ERP systems for luxury brands, business modeling tools, and decision-making systems, building a broad technical foundation and an ability to adapt quickly to new problem spaces. At Rivian, she focuses on building tooling and infrastructure that turns fleet data into actionable insights for autonomy development. Alongside her full-time role, Ksenija is pursuing a PhD in ML-aided sustainable scheduling, researching how reinforcement learning can be applied to real-time job shop scheduling to make industrial production more efficient and less wasteful.