Senior Systems Engineer - Autonomy Behavior

General Motors; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 153,000 - 234,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

Retirement savings plan

GM vehicle discounts

Job summary

General Motors is seeking a Senior Autonomy Behavior Systems Engineer in Sunnyvale, CA. You will own end-to-end validation of autonomous driving behaviors, turning safety goals and requirements into measurable tests, metrics, and release decisions.

You’ll combine simulation, road data, and real-world testing across diverse scenarios and software versions, partnering with multiple teams to ensure readiness for a successful fleet launch.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree in related field
• 5+ years in systems engineering, autonomy, robotics, or safety-critical validation
• Proven experience supporting commercial fleet launches
• Strong systems engineering fundamentals (decomposition, requirements, interface, verification, traceability)
• Experience designing/executing large-scale simulation evaluations
• Strong Python experience for data analysis, test automation, simulation workflows
• Excellent written and verbal communication; ability to work across teams
• Ability to manage stakeholders and drive work to completion

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end validation for autonomous driving behaviors, from scoping to launch
• Combine simulation, road data, testing, and expert review across large scenarios
• Define metrics, test strategies, and acceptance criteria for autonomous behavior
• Collaborate with teams inside and outside the autonomy organization on readiness for release

Skills

Python

Systems engineering

Autonomous vehicles

Simulation

Requirements writing

Stakeholder management

Communication

Education

Master’s degree in a related field

Tools

Simulation software

Data analysis tools

Job description

Job Description

Senior Systems Engineer - Autonomy Behavior

The Role

As a Senior Autonomy Behavior Systems Engineer, you will help define and validate how an autonomous vehicle behaves in the real world. You will own one or more behavior areas from requirements through simulation evaluation, road-data review, and release recommendation.

This role sits at the intersection of systems engineering, software validation, simulation, and safety. You will turn broad product and safety goals into clear behavior definitions, testable requirements, metrics, test plans, and evidence. You will also need to understand what the results mean, where they are weak, and what should happen next.

What You’ll Do

• Own end-to-end validation for one or more autonomous driving behaviors, from initial behavior scoping and requirements definition to product launch.
• Combine simulation, road data, closed-course testing, and expert review to evaluate behavior across large scenario sets, diverse conditions, software versions, and fleet configurations.
• Define, deploy, and refine metrics, test strategies and acceptance criteria for autonomous behavior for simulation and road.
• Partner with teams across and outside the autonomy organization to assess, author, and present behavior readiness for release and launch decisions.

Required Qualifications

• Master’s degree in systems engineering, mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, robotics, or a related field.
• 5 or more years of professional experience in systems engineering, autonomous vehicles, robotics, simulation, or safety-critical validation.
• Proven experience evaluating autonomous vehicles in support of a commercial fleet launch.
• Strong understanding of systems engineering fundamentals, including system decomposition, use‑case definition, requirements authoring, interface definition, verification planning, and traceability.
• Professional experience designing or executing simulation-based evaluations at scale, not just isolated scenario demonstrations.
• Strong Python experience for data analysis, test automation, simulation workflows, and engineering tools and exposure to agentic workflows.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with a track record of working effectively across teams.
• Demonstrated ability to manage stakeholders, resolve ambiguity, set expectations, and drive work to completion without waiting for a perfect process.

What Will Give You a Competitive Edge

• Experience with human benchmarking for behavioral or safety evaluation, including attentive human benchmark data, human percentiles, or expert labeling.
• Experience with counterfactual analysis in simulation, including comparing an autonomous vehicle response with a human or alternate-system response under the same scene conditions.
• Familiarity with safety cases, safety claims, and the role of validation evidence in supporting them.
• Experience with hazard analysis, including structured hazard analysis, scenario-based hazard analysis, failure analysis, or similar methods.
• Understanding of risk quantification, risk acceptance, risk budgets, and mitigation prioritization.
• Experience translating legal or regulatory expectations into behavioral requirements, metrics, test coverage, or compliance evidence.
• Experience with large scenario libraries, synthetic test generation, replay‑to‑simulation workflows, simulation test protocols, or validation scorecards.

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 $153,200 to $234,100. 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

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

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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.

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