Principal Software Engineer – Core OS, Vehicle Compute

General Motors; Anchorage (AK); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

General Motors is hiring a Principal Software Engineer to lead the Core OS layer for vehicle compute hardware. You will shape architecture for hypervisors, virtualization, and boot/security chains, enabling Linux, Android, and QNX across a unified platform.

You will drive safety-partitioning, health monitoring, and inter-OS collaboration with cross-functional teams and silicon partners to ensure production-grade performance in millions of vehicles.

Qualifications

• Experience defining architecture and long-term roadmaps for complex OS layers.
• Ability to drive inter-team decisions with silicon partners and functional-safety teams.
• Proven expertise with multi-OS foundations (Linux-based, Android, QNX) on embedded platforms.

Responsibilities

• Define architecture and roadmap for GM Core OS layer, including hypervisors and boot chain.
• Architect multi-OS foundation enabling embedded Linux with Yocto, Android, and QNX.
• Establish platform safety architecture with partition isolation and health monitoring.
• Define container/workload-management architecture for on-vehicle execution and lifecycle management.

Skills

Hypervisors

Virtualization

Embedded Linux

Yocto

Android

QNX

System architecture

Leadership

Job description

Job Description

At General Motors, our product teams are redefining mobility. Through a human-centered design process, we create vehicles and experiences that are designed not just to be seen, but to be felt. We're turning today's impossible into tomorrow's standard -from breakthrough hardware and battery systems to intuitive design, intelligent software, and next-generation safety and entertainment features.

Every day, our products move millions of people as we aim to make driving safer, smarter, and more connected, shaping the future of transportation on a global scale

The Role

The Core OS group is a newly formed team building the operating-system foundation GM's next generation of vehicle software runs on: hypervisors and virtualization, safety partitioning and health management, container runtime and workload orchestration, and the boot and secure-boot chain that let Linux, Android, and QNX share a single high-compute platform safely and efficiently. As Principal Software Engineer, you are the senior technical authority and system architect for that layer - you'll determine which platform problems matter most, then define the architecture and drive the solutions that solve them, setting long-term direction for virtualization, partitioning, and platform services across GM's vehicle compute. Your influence extends well past your own code: establishing the technical interfaces to the silicon, guest OS, and functional-safety organizations, driving decisions with hypervisor and silicon partners, and guiding engineers across multiple teams toward a foundation that must hold up to production performance, reliability, and safety requirements in millions of vehicles.

What You'll Do

• 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