Principal Core OS Architect — Vehicle Compute

General Motors; Mountain View (CA); Hybrid; USD 216,000 - 450,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health and wellbeing benefits

Hybrid work model

Job summary

General Motors seeks a Principal Software Engineer to lead the Core OS layer, defining architecture for hypervisors, virtualization, and platform services across GM's vehicle compute. You will shape safety, performance, and multi-OS integration while mentoring engineers and coordinating with silicon and functional-safety teams.

You will drive decisions on containerization, boot chains, and health monitoring, ensuring scalable, secure, and production-ready software for millions of vehicles.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related field; or equivalent experience.
• Fifteen or more years of experience in embedded, kernel-level, or systems software development, including production-grade systems.
• Proven experience architecting operating-system or virtualization platforms for high-performance or safety-critical systems.
• Deep expertise in at least two of the following areas: Type 1 hypervisors and virtualization; Real-time operating systems; Embedded Linux internals; Secure boot and platform integrity; Arm SoC architecture.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the architecture and long-term roadmap for GM’s Core OS layer, including hypervisors, virtualization, virtual machine lifecycle, resource partitioning, inter-virtual-machine communication, and the boot and secure-boot chain.
• Architect the multi-operating-system foundation that enables embedded Linux, including Yocto-based distributions, Android, and QNX to run on shared vehicle compute with consistent platform services and interfaces.
• Establish the platform safety architecture, including freedom from interference between partitions, health monitoring, fault detection and recovery, in partnership with functional safety and cybersecurity organizations.
• Define the container and workload-management architecture for on-vehicle execution, including isolation, lifecycle management, resource governance, and updateability.
• Own the system-level performance strategy across compute efficiency, latency, boot time, memory footprint, and deterministic behavior, and lead optimization efforts across software and hardware boundaries.
• Drive build-versus-buy and technology-selection decisions for hypervisor, real-time operating system, and runtime components, and lead technical relationships with the corresponding suppliers.
• Provide technical mentorship and direction to Staff and Senior Software Engineers while establishing engineering standards and review practices for the new organization.
• Lead complex investigations and root-cause analyses across virtualization, operating-system, and silicon boundaries. Represent Core OS in technical councils, architecture reviews, and cross-functional design forums, and define ownership boundaries with adjacent platform teams.

Skills

Embedded systems

Kernel development

OS architecture

C/C++

Cross-functional leadership

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related

Master’s degree

Tools

Git

CI/CD

Yocto

QNX/Open OS

Job description

General Motors seeks a Principal Software Engineer to lead the Core OS layer, defining architecture for hypervisors, virtualization, and platform services across GM's vehicle compute. You will shape safety, performance, and multi-OS integration while mentoring engineers and coordinating with silicon and functional-safety teams.

You will drive decisions on containerization, boot chains, and health monitoring, ensuring scalable, secure, and production-ready software for millions of vehicles.