Job DescriptionWork Arrangement: This role is based remotely, but if the candidate lives within a 50 miles radius of a GM hub, they will be expected to report to the location three times a week (or other frequency dictated by your manager).
The Role: General Motors is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to set technical direction for the engineering platforms that build, test, integrate, validate, and deliver embedded software for software-defined vehicles. This role is for an enterprise-level technical authority who can define the future-state engineering system, resolve architectural issues that span organizations and domains, and turn strategy into durable platforms, standards, and operating mechanisms.
The successful candidate will shape direction across multiple technical areas and organizations, advise senior and executive leadership on complex tradeoffs, and create alignment across embedded software, cloud, simulation, test, release, cybersecurity, quality, and supplier ecosystems. The role may align to one or more of the four specialization areas below.
Expectations and Impact: - Set multi-year technical direction and target-state architecture for a broad, cross-domain capability or interconnected set of platform capabilities.
- Identify systemic constraints and opportunities across the software lifecycle, then define the strategy, investment priorities, and sequencing required to address them.
- Resolve the most ambiguous and consequential architectural tradeoffs spanning organizations, product lines, suppliers, technology stacks, and delivery cadences.
- Establish enterprise-level principles, standards, governance, reliability expectations, and decision frameworks that scale beyond a single program or team.
- Create leverage through platforms, automation, reusable patterns, data, and operating models that materially improve engineering effectiveness and product outcomes.
- Influence senior and executive leaders through clear recommendations grounded in technical judgment, risk, cost, quality, and measurable business impact.
- Lead through other technical leaders by developing principal and staff engineers, strengthening communities of practice, and raising the quality of architectural decisions.
- Remain technically credible and selectively hands-on in the highest-value or highest-risk problems.
Specialization Areas: 1. Virtualization and CI infrastructure Set the strategy for a scalable virtual development platform spanning embedded, simulation, and cloud workloads. Define enterprise architecture and standards for CI/CD, GitOps, Kubernetes, Terraform and infrastructure as code, progressive delivery, artifact and environment management, security, compliance, and observability. Connect virtualized development to the broader vehicle software lifecycle and guide adoption across organizations.
Visualization and CI-specific basic qualifications
- Significant experience setting architecture and technical direction for CI/CD platforms spanning embedded, simulation, and cloud workloads.
- Deep experience with Kubernetes cluster operations, Terraform or comparable infrastructure-as-code module design, and production cloud architecture.
- Experience establishing enterprise standards for security, compliance, progressive delivery, artifact flows, and observability.
- Demonstrated ability to drive adoption of a common virtual development platform across organizations or product lines.
2. Continuous integration and quality gating Set the end-to-end architecture and policy for how vehicle software is built, composed, validated, promoted, and released. Define the quality-gating model, mainline-protection strategy, evidence standards, integration controls, and release-readiness framework across component, pillar, system, virtual, physical, and release-train flows. Establish the metrics and operating mechanisms that make quality signals trustworthy and delivery risk visible.
CI and Quality-related basic qualifications
- Significant experience defining enterprise CI/CD architecture, quality-gating policy, and release-readiness frameworks for embedded or vehicle software.
- Deep understanding of MCU and SoC build systems, embedded Linux, AUTOSAR, Yocto, containers, cross-compilation, or vehicle deployment workflows.
- Experience governing GitHub Enterprise or comparable platforms, artifact promotion, virtual and hardware validation, and secure delivery controls.
- Demonstrated ability to align multiple organizations around objective quality signals, integration standards, and release policy.
3. Test-system modernization Set the long-term architecture and modernization strategy for embedded test execution across virtual and physical environments. Establish common approaches to configuration and variation management, change-impact analysis, risk-based regression, result-data modeling, diagnostics, APIs, analytics, and failure triage. Create a connected test ecosystem that improves traceability, execution efficiency, learning from test data, and decision quality across the vehicle software lifecycle.
Test-specific basic qualifications
- Significant experience setting architecture and modernization strategy for large-scale embedded test systems across virtual and physical environments.
- Deep expertise in variation management, configuration comparison, change-impact analysis, and risk-based regression strategies.
- Experience defining common test-result data models, APIs, analytics, diagnostics, and integrations across multiple engineering organizations.
- Demonstrated ability to establish enterprise test standards that improve traceability, execution efficiency, failure triage, and decision quality.
4. Build-system modernization Set the enterprise strategy for scalable embedded build systems and developer productivity. Define migration and convergence patterns for legacy Make or shell workflows and Bazel-based systems; establish standards for rules, toolchains, platforms, reproducibility, caching, security, provenance, and release integration; and guide adoption across repositories, teams, and product lines. Evaluate emerging AI-assisted engineering capabilities using clear quality, adoption, and productivity measures.
Build System-specific basic qualifications
- Significant experience setting enterprise build-system architecture and developer-productivity strategy for embedded software.
- Deep experience leading large-scale migration from Make or shell-based orchestration to Bazel or a comparable build platform.
- Experience defining reusable rules, macros, toolchains, platforms, repository standards, artifact provenance, and reproducible build practices.
- Demonstrated ability to guide adoption and measure quality, reliability, capacity, developer feedback, and productivity outcomes across organizations.
What You'll Do: - Define the future-state architecture and multi-year roadmap for the assigned domain and its interfaces with adjacent domains.
- Establish principles, standards, governance, and decision rights that align independent teams and delivery organizations.
- Lead the resolution of cross-domain technical risks involving architecture, quality, security, reliability, cost, scalability, and delivery continuity.
- Advise senior and executive leadership on investment choices, program risk, platform health, and tradeoffs between local optimization and enterprise value.
- Convene architecture reviews and technical communities that create durable alignment across engineering, validation, cloud, cybersecurity, quality, program management, and suppliers.
- Sponsor high-leverage platform capabilities, automation, data models, and self-service experiences that improve outcomes at scale.
- Define measures of success and ensure the organization uses evidence to prioritize improvements and verify impact.
- Mentor and develop staff- and principal-level engineers and strengthen the organization's technical leadership pipeline.
- Represent GM's technical direction with internal and external partners while maintaining a high bar for safety, quality, security, and customer impact.
Your Skills & Abilities (Required Qualifications): - Bachelor's degree in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, software engineering, systems engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
- Typically, 15 or more years of experience developing, integrating, deploying, or validating software systems, including substantial experience leading architecture across organizations.
- Deep understanding of embedded and real-time software architecture and a record of delivering high-quality safety-critical or otherwise mission-critical products.
- Demonstrated enterprise or multi-organization technical influence, including the ability to align leaders and teams without direct authority.
- Exceptional judgment in ambiguous, high-consequence technical decisions and the ability to communicate complex tradeoffs to technical and executive audiences.
- Strong experience with production engineering platforms, software delivery systems, or engineering productivity capabilities; proficiency in Python and at least one additional language used in software or engineering-tooling environments.
- Significant depth in at least one of the four specialization areas described above and the breadth to connect it to the others.
- Experience designing or governing systems involving embedded software, Linux, Git, CI/CD, cloud platforms, infrastructure as code, test automation, artifact management, data, APIs, or platform reliability, as applicable to the selected specialization.
What Will Give You a Competitive Edge (Preferred Qualifications): - Experience in automotive, aerospace, defense, industrial, or another embedded, real-time, regulated, or safety-critical environment.
- Knowledge of functional safety, ISO 26262, cybersecurity engineering, ASPICE, MISRA, AUTOSAR, or related engineering practices.
- Experience with vehicle-level integration and validation, including SIL, CoSIM, vECU, HIL, benches, physical systems, or other virtual and hardware-based environments.
- A record of creating enterprise standards, platform strategies, technical communities, developer self-service, reliability objectives, or measurable productivity improvements.
- Advanced degree in a related technical field.
Measures of Success: - A coherent, adopted technical direction across organizations, programs, and delivery cadences.
- Reduced systemic friction and risk across build, test, integration, release, and operational workflows.
- Higher confidence in software quality, traceability, security, release readiness, and engineering data.
- Durable platform adoption and measurable improvement in speed, reliability, capacity, reuse, and developer effectiveness.
- Stronger technical leadership bench, clearer architectural accountability, and faster resolution of cross-domain issues.
Company vehicle: Upon successful completion of a motor vehicle report review, you will be eligible to participate in a company vehicle evaluation program, though which you will be assigned a General Motors vehicle to drive and evaluate. Note: program participants are required to purchase/lease a qualifying GM vehicle every four years unless one of a limited number of exceptions applies.
Compensation: The compensation information is a good faith estimate only. It is based on what a successful applicant might be paid in accordance with applicable state laws. The actual base salary a successful candidate will be offered within this range will vary based on factors relevant to the position, as well as geography of the selected candidate.
The salary range for this role is 226,000 and 407,100. The actual base salary a successful candidate will be offered within this range will vary based on factors relevant to the position.
Bonus Potential: An incentive pay program offers payouts based on company performance, job level, and individual performance.
Benefits: GM offers a variety of health and wellbeing benefit programs. Benefit options include medical, dental, vision, Health Savings Account, Flexible Spending Accounts, retirement savings plan, sickness and accident benefits, life insurance, paid vacation & holidays, tuition assistance programs, employee assistance program, GM vehicle discounts and more.
This role is based remotely, but if the selected candidate lives within a specific mile radius of a GM hub, they will be expected to report to the location three times a week {or other frequency dictated by your manager}.The selected candidate will be required to travel <25% for this role.This job may be eligible for relocation benefits.
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