Senior ML/AI Engineer - Observability

General Motors; Sunnyvale (CA); Hybrid; USD 178,420 - 230,500; Full time

Job summary

General Motors in Sunnyvale, CA, is seeking a Senior Engineer to lead observability initiatives, design scalable cloud services, and mentor engineers. You will contribute code, perform reviews, and influence the technical roadmap while balancing delivery with technical debt.

A passion for self‑driving technology and strong Go production‑scale skills are essential. You will collaborate with cross‑functional teams to improve reliability, implement SLIs/SLOs, and ensure maintainable services across

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience designing, building, and operating production systems at scale in the cloud.
• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or related field or equivalent work experience.
• Understanding of AI Engineering principles and concepts.
• Experience designing highly scalable, reliable, and maintainable services.
• Understanding of Unix/Linux, SSH, and networking fundamentals.
• Attention to detail, and a desire to improve processes and systems around you.
• Ability to lead and influence others, both internal and external to the team.
• Principled reasoning and the ability to research, document, communicate, and defend proposals, and provide and take critical feedback.
• Ability to manage competing priorities, focus on shipping, and work effectively under pressure.
• Passion for mentoring and growing junior engineers.
• Passion for leveling up the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the team.
• Passion for self‑driving technology and its potential impact on the world.

Responsibilities

• Contribute code and reviews to improve performance and reliability of observability systems.
• Identify opportunities to improve engineering through observability.
• Guide engineers to use existing tools effectively.
• Build tools to collect and act on observability signals from cloud systems and sensors.
• Evaluate new tools and influence the technical roadmap with PoCs.
• Promote engineering best practices across the team and organization.
• Balance delivering impact with addressing technical debt.
• Mentor and grow engineers across the organization.

Skills

Go

Cloud architecture

System design

Observability tooling

Mentoring

Leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

Istio

Terraform

Prometheus

Grafana

TSDBs

Observability pipelines

Job description

About Us

The AI Cloud and Developer Infrastructure organization is responsible for delivering and maintaining the tools and services engineers here at GM use every day to do their best work and drive our cars forward. Tools and services we work on enhancing the entire development process of engineers at GM — 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 Senior 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 is able to 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

• 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.

Your Skills & Abilities (Required Qualifications)

• 5+ years of experience designing, building, and operating production systems at scale in the cloud.
• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or related field or equivalent work experience.
• Understanding of AI Engineering principles and concepts.
• Experience designing highly scalable, reliable, and maintainable services.
• Experience writing in effective Go or other equivalent languages at production scale.
• Understanding of Unix/Linux, SSH, and networking fundamentals.
• Attention to detail, and a desire to improve processes and systems around you.
• Ability to lead and influence others, both internal and external to the team.
• Principled reasoning and the ability to research, document, communicate, and defend proposals, and provide and take critical feedback.
• Ability to effectively make trade‑offs and communicate the reasoning.
• Ability to manage competing priorities, focus on shipping, and work effectively under pressure.
• Passion for mentoring and growing junior engineers.
• Passion for leveling up the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the team.
• Passion for self‑driving technology and its potential impact on the world.

What Will Give You a Competitive Edge (Preferred Qualifications)

• 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.
• 5+ years of experience designing, building, and operating production systems at scale in the cloud.

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 $178,420 to $230,500. 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.

Employment Model

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.

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.