Principal Engineer, Autonomy Developer Productivity

General Motors; Mountain View (CA); Hybrid; USD 280,000 - 384,600; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Company vehicle program

Competitive compensation

Job summary

General Motors is seeking a Principal Engineer for Autonomy Developer Productivity in a hybrid role across Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Austin, and Warren. You will shape the tooling and services that engineers rely on daily, focusing on observability, performance, and reliability of autonomous vehicle development systems.

You will lead by example, mentor engineers, and drive high-ROI investments with minimal guidance, balancing business needs with user outcomes and team growth.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS or related field; 10+ years of technical strategy and cross-team coordination.
• Extensive experience designing large-scale distributed systems and container orchestration.
• Proficient in Go, Python, or equivalent; strong Unix/Linux and networking knowledge.
• Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, Istio, and observability tooling.

Responsibilities

• Contribute code, review changes, and design observability improvements.
• Identify opportunities to improve engineering productivity and reliability.
• Collaborate with software teams to optimize tool usage and adoption.
• Build tools to collect and act on observability signals from distributed systems and sensors.
• Mentor engineers and influence the technical roadmap.

Skills

Kubernetes

Go

Python

Distributed systems

Observability

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Docker

Terraform

Prometheus

Grafana

Istio

Job description

## Principal Engineer, Autonomy Developer ProductivityApplyremote type: Hybridlocations: Mountain View, California, United States of America: Austin, Texas, United States of America: Sunnyvale, California, United States of America: Warren, Michigan, United States of Americatime type: Full timeposted on: Posted Todayjob requisition id: JR-202616155**Job Description****About Us**The **AV Developer Productivity** organization is responsible for delivering and maintaining the tools and services engineers in the **GM Autonomous** org use every day to do their best work and drive our cars forward. Tools and services we work on enhancing the entire development process — how/where code is checked out, modified, compiled, tested, merged, and eventually deployed. Our goal is to ensure our AV engineers and others here have world class tools and a seamless development experience so that they can focus on the problems that matter most in their domain.**The Role**We are looking for a **Principal Engineer** with an extensive engineering background, experience using a variety of developer tools and technologies, and who is passionate about developer productivity. As a leader on this team, we are looking for someone who cares deeply about the technical development of other engineers on the team and can effectively balance the needs and priorities of the business, our users, and the growth of our engineers.This engineer will start delivering impact through observability frameworks and will evolve depending on business needs but they will be expected to identify high ROI investments with minimal guidance.**What You’ll Do (Responsibilities)*** Using your software and systems engineering skills to contribute code, perform code reviews, and create technical designs that improve performance and reliability of observability systems.* Proactively identify and address challenges that create new opportunities to improve the state of engineering through observability.* Partnering with Software Engineering teams to better understand use-cases and guide the engineers to use the existing tools effectively.* Building tools to enable engineers to collect and act on observability signals from distributed cloud systems and on-vehicle sensors* Influence the team’s technical roadmap by evaluating new tools and technologies through PoCs and selecting roadmap investments that align with our team vision* Drive software engineering best practices both within your team and across the AV organization, and create tooling which encourages these* Guide the team to find the right balance between delivering impact and addressing technical debt* Mentor and grow engineers on the team and across the organization**Minimum Qualifications (Must-Have)*** 10+ years of experience or proven record of defining and executing technical strategy that required coordination across multiple teams, senior executives, and front-line engineers* Bachelors Degree in Computer Science or related field OR equivalent work experience* Experience driving consensus on a multi-functional effort using influence without authority* Experience in designing and implementing large scale systems* Considerable experience in working with container orchestration systems (eg. Kubernetes)* Proficient in designing and developing sophisticated distributed systems, with expertise in one or more high-level programming languages such as Go, Python, Rust, C/C++, NodeJS or equivalent* Considerable experience with Unix/Linux, SSH, and networking fundamentals* Effective collaboration skills and experience researching, documenting, communicating, and defending proposals and taking and giving critical feedback* Experience mentoring and growing junior engineers**Preferred Qualifications (Nice-to-Have)*** Experience working with GCP, AWS, or Azure* Familiarity with Kubernetes, Docker, Istio, Terraform, Prometheus, Grafana, TSDBs and observability pipelines (e.g. either for logging or metrics or tracing)* Skilled in defining and instrumenting SLIs and SLOs* Own or contribute to Open Source projects* Passion for self-driving technology and its potential impact on the world**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 compensation may not be representative for positions located outside of New York, Colorado, California, or Washington.* **The salary range for this role:** is $280,000 to $384,600. 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.**Company Vehicle:** Upon successful completion of a motor vehicle report review, you will be eligible to participate in a company vehicle evaluation program, through 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.This role is categorized as hybrid. This means the selected candidate is expected to report to a specific location at least 3 times a week {or other frequency dictated by their manager}.This job may be eligible for relocation benefits.**About GM**Our vision is a world with Zero Crashes, Zero Emissions and Zero Congestion and we embrace the responsibility to lead the change that will make our world better, safer and more equitable for all.**Why Join Us**We believe we all must make a choice every day – individually and collectively – to drive meaningful change through our words, our deeds and our culture. Every day, we want every employee to feel they belong to one General Motors team.**Benefits Overview**From day one, we're looking out for your well-being–at work and at home–so you can focus on realizing your ambitions. Learn how GM supports a rewarding career that rewards you personally by visiting **Total Rewards resources**.**Non-Discrimination and Equal Employment Opportunities (U.S.)**General Motors is committed to being a workplace that is not only free of unlawful discrimination, but one that genuinely fosters inclusion and belonging. We strongly believe that providing an inclusive workplace creates an environment in which our employees can thrive and develop better products for our customers.All employment decisions are made on a non-discriminatory basis without regard to sex, race, color, national origin, citizenship status, religion, age, disability, pregnancy or maternity status, sexual orientation, gender identity, status as a veteran or protected veteran, or any other similarly protected status in accordance with federal, state and local laws.We encourage interested candidates to review the key responsibilities and qualifications for each role and apply for any positions that match their skills and capabilities. Applicants in the recruitment process may be required, where applicable, to successfully complete a role-related assessment(s) and/or a pre-employment screening prior to beginning employment. To learn more, visit **How we Hire**.**Accommodations**General Motors offers opportunities to all job seekers including individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation to assist with your job search or application for employment, **email**us or call us at 1-800-865-7580. In your email, please include a description of the specific accommodation you are requesting as well as the job title and requisition number of the position for which you are applying.