Staff Cybersecurity Software Engineer - Authorization Services

General Motors Company; Sunnyvale (CA); Remote; USD 160,000 - 246,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

GM vehicle discounts

Job summary

General Motors is seeking a staff software engineer to lead authorization services across the Platform Security Engineering pillar. You will design, build, and operate production-critical auth services, mentor engineers, and shape security product direction for cloud-native architectures.

This execution-focused role emphasizes deep technical credibility, leadership by example, and delivering secure, reliable security products across GM. Remote-ready with on-call responsibilities.

Qualifications

• This role requires 8+ years of hands-on application development including auth.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent expertise in CS/SE/IT.
• Experience building RBAC and ABAC systems for complex use cases.
• Strong coding skills in Go, Java, Python, and/or JavaScript.
• Proven experience with IaC, Helm, GitOps, Argo CD, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience applying AI-assisted software engineering across the lifecycle.
• Excellent problem-solving for security, reliability, and scalability.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and implementation of authorization frameworks.
• Architect access control systems using permissions, roles, and attributes.
• Define policy-driven distributed authorization solutions.
• Conduct security reviews and drive remediation across services.
• Develop cloud-native microservices and APIs for public clouds.
• Write secure code in Go, Java, Python, or JavaScript.
• Create guardrails and guidance for engineering teams.
• Implement observability with metrics, logs, traces, and dashboards.

Skills

Authentication

Authorization

Go

Java

Python

JavaScript

Azure

Docker

Kubernetes

Argo CD

GitHub Actions

Helm

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science / Software Engineering / IT

Tools

Azure

Docker

Kubernetes

Argo CD

Helm

GitHub Actions

Go

Java

Python

JavaScript

Job description

Job Description

The Role

This role is a staff level individual contributor within the Platform Security Engineering pillar of GM’s broader Security Services organization.

In this role, you will serve as a staff software engineer and application-layer security expert responsible for designing, building, and operating production-critical authorization services. You will lead delivery of strategic authorization capabilities, raise engineering standards for authentication and authorization, and help define how users and systems sign in and what they are permitted to do. You will shape technology direction, mentor engineers, and partner with managers to deliver secure, reliable, and easy-to-operate security products across the organization.

This is an execution-focused role requiring deep expertise, in which influence is earned through technical credibility, mentorship, and leadership by example.

What You’ll Do

• Lead the design and implementation of authorization frameworks following industry standards and then extending them.
• Architect and build access control systems that use permissions, roles, and attributes to decide who can perform specific actions.
• Define and implement policy-driven and distributed authorization solutions.
• Lead security and authorization reviews across services and drive remediation of issues.
• Design, develop, test, and maintain cloud-native microservices and APIs while setting the technical direction for how services are built, deployed, and operated on public cloud platforms
• Write clean, testable, and secure code in one or more languages such as Go, Java, Python, and JavaScript.
• Author technical guidance, reusable patterns, and guardrails, and roll out these practices across product environments.
• Define and implement observability for services, including metrics, logs, traces, dashboards, and alerts.
• Design data models and manage data storage using relational and graph databases.
• Support critical production systems and be on call rotation.

Your Skills & Abilities (Required Qualifications)

• 8+ years of hands-on application development experience, including authentication, authorization, or access control.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent expertise.
• Deep expertise in building and maintaining role-based and attribute-based access control systems for complex use cases.
• Strong programming skills in one or more of the following: Go, Springboot, Python and JavaScript.
• Experience with infrastructure as code, Helm, GitOps, Argo CD, or comparable deployment automation.
• Experience applying AI-assisted software engineering across design, implementation, testing, debugging, documentation, and continuous improvement
• Advanced problem-solving skills with a focus on security, reliability, scalability, and maintainability.
• Clear written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to lead design discussions.
• Experience with modern cloud and container technologies such as Azure, Docker, and Kubernetes (K8s), along with infrastructure automation and comparable DevOps practices.
• Experience building secure applications with identity, authentication, authorization, role-based access, secrets, and secure service-to-service communication.
• Experience with Azure services such as managed databases, object storage, Key Vault, Redis, managed identity, or equivalent cloud services.
• Experience with automated testing, continuous integration and delivery pipelines, GitHub Actions or comparable technologies, source control, and production release practices.
• Experience with observability, including structured logging, metrics, tracing, health checks, alerting, and operational dashboards.

What Can Give You a Competitive Advantage (Preferred Qualifications)

• Deep expertise in distributed application development, authorization frameworks, and policy engines.
• Expertise in modeling complex permissions and relationships in graph or relationship-focused data stores.
• Demonstrated expertise in building highly available and scalable custom security frameworks and tooling.
• Hands-on experience with IAM, OAuth, OIDC, SpiceDB, Zanzibar.

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 actual base salary a successful candidate will be offered within this range will vary based on factors relevant to the position, as well as geography of the selected candidate.

• The salary range for this role is $160,200-$246,300. 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

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.

#LI-SB3

GM does not provide immigration-related sponsorship for this role. Do not apply for this role if you will need GM immigration sponsorship now or in the future. This includes direct company sponsorship, entry of GM as the immigration employer of record on a government form, and any work authorization requiring a written submission or other immigration support from the company (e.g., H1-B, OPT, STEM OPT, CPT, TN, J-1, etc). This role is based remotely, but if the selected candidate lives within a specific mile radius of a GM hub, they will be expected to report to the location three times a week {or other frequency dictated by your manager}. Relocation benefits are available for candidates who qualify under company policy.

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

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

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