Junior Software Engineer, AV Frameworks & IPC

generalmotors; Sunnyvale (CA); Hybrid; USD 125,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

General Motors is seeking an early-career Software Engineer for its AV Frameworks to design and deliver core IPC and runtime building blocks used by AV/Robotics applications on vehicle, benches, and simulation. You’ll work across C++ systems, Linux, and networking/IPC to achieve low-latency messaging and deterministic performance.

This role targets recent graduates or engineers early in their career who want to deepen embedded systems, distributed software, and autonomous driving experience.

Qualifications

• Recently completed a BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, Electrical/Computer Engineering, Robotics, or a related field.
• Strong background in modern C++ (20/23) and Python development.
• Strong grasp of software fundamentals including 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, fault handling, and reproducible performance characteristics.
• 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 across design, implementation, integration, and testing.

Skills

C++ (modern 20/23)

Python

Concurrency

Memory management

IPC/messaging

Linux networking

Debugging

Education

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

Tools

ROS 2

DDS

gRPC

Job description

General Motors is seeking an early-career Software Engineer for its AV Frameworks to design and deliver core IPC and runtime building blocks used by AV/Robotics applications on vehicle, benches, and simulation. You’ll work across C++ systems, Linux, and networking/IPC to achieve low-latency messaging and deterministic performance.

This role targets recent graduates or engineers early in their career who want to deepen embedded systems, distributed software, and autonomous driving experience.