Junior Software Engineer – AV Frameworks & IPC

General Motors; Sunnyvale (CA); Hybrid; USD 130,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

General Motors is hiring an early-career Software Engineer for the AV Frameworks team in Sunnyvale, CA. You will design and deliver core IPC and runtime building blocks for AV/Robotics applications, working across C++ systems, Linux, and networking to achieve low-latency messaging and deterministic scheduling.

You will learn from experienced engineers while contributing code to dependable, observable, and maintainable vehicle software.

Qualifications

• BS/MS/PhD in CS/EE/Robotics or related field.
• Strong background in modern C++ (20/23) and Python development.
• Strong grasp of concurrency, memory management, and performance profiling.
• Hands-on experience with IPC/messaging systems and distributed systems fundamentals.
• Knowledge of Linux-based networking (sockets, TCP/UDP, multicast).
• Ability to debug complex software problems and communicate clearly in a team.
• Interest in autonomous vehicles, robotics, embedded systems, or high-performance software.

Responsibilities

• Build and debug high-performance IPC and middleware primitives (publish/subscribe, shared memory, serialization, discovery, QoS).
• Drive latency, throughput, and determinism improvements through profiling, tracing, benchmarking, and targeted optimizations.
• Build developer-facing APIs, tooling, and documentation for internal customers.
• Deliver platform-ready components with observability and robust fault handling.
• Collaborate with OS, drivers, safety, controls, perception, and tooling teams to ramp up on AV software.
• Apply production rigor: code reviews, testing strategies, and rollout/rollback discipline.
• Grow through progressively more complex assignments spanning design, implementation, integration, and testing.

Skills

C++ (20/23)

Python

Concurrency

Memory management

IPC/messaging

Linux networking

Debugging

Autonomous systems interest

Education

BS/MS/PhD in CS/EE/Robotics or related

Tools

ROS 2

DDS

gRPC

Protobuf

FlatBuffers

Job description

General Motors is hiring an early-career Software Engineer for the AV Frameworks team in Sunnyvale, CA. You will design and deliver core IPC and runtime building blocks for AV/Robotics applications, working across C++ systems, Linux, and networking to achieve low-latency messaging and deterministic scheduling.

You will learn from experienced engineers while contributing code to dependable, observable, and maintainable vehicle software.