Principal Engineer, Autonomy Developer Productivity

General Motors; Sunnyvale (CA); Hybrid; USD 280,000 - 385,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Company vehicle program

Job summary

General Motors is seeking a Principal Engineer for the AV Developer Productivity organization, delivering world-class tools for GM Autonomous engineers. You will lead technical direction, guide observability initiatives, and mentor engineers while balancing business priorities and growth opportunities.

You will shape the engineering roadmap, evaluate new tools, and drive high ROI investments with minimal guidance in a hybrid work model.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience or proven record of defining and executing technical strategy involving multiple teams and executives.
• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field or equivalent work experience.
• Experience driving consensus on multi-functional efforts using influence without authority.
• Experience in designing and implementing large-scale systems.
• Significant experience with container orchestration systems (eg. Kubernetes).
• Proficient in designing distributed systems and in one or more languages such as Go, Python, Rust, C/C++, NodeJS.
• Experience with Unix/Linux, SSH, and networking fundamentals.
• Strong collaboration, documentation, and feedback skills; mentoring experience.

Responsibilities

• Contribute code, perform code reviews, and design improvements for observability systems.
• Identify challenges and opportunities to improve engineering through observability.
• Collaborate with Software Engineering teams to guide tool usage and use-cases.
• Build tools to collect and act on observability signals from cloud systems and sensors.
• Evaluate new tools through PoCs and shape roadmap investments aligned with team vision.
• Promote software engineering best practices within the team and organization.
• Balance delivering impact with addressing technical debt.
• Mentor and grow engineers across the organization.

Skills

Go

Python

Rust

C/C++

NodeJS

Distributed systems

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

Istio

Terraform

Prometheus

Grafana

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.

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.