Staff Data Engineer - GM Motorsports

General Motors; Bismarck (ND); Remote; USD 160,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

GM vehicle discounts

Retirement savings plan

Job summary

General Motors is seeking a Staff Data Engineer to set technical direction for Motorsports data initiatives and lead architecture across real-time ingestion, telemetry, data quality, and cloud platforms. You will mentor engineers, partner with stakeholders, and drive durable business outcomes in a remote work setup.

The role emphasizes independent judgment, cross-team collaboration, and delivering scalable data products for race-day operations with measurable reliability improvements.

Qualifications

• Deep expertise in data engineering, distributed systems, cloud platforms, and production software development.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction and develop target-state architecture for complex, cross-system data platforms.
• Lead large, high-visibility initiatives that integrate multiple teams and technologies.
• Design and implement scalable real-time ingestion, telemetry, and data quality solutions.
• Exercise independent judgment to analyze problems and make durable technical decisions.
• Establish measurable technical and operational outcomes including reliability and data quality.
• Develop standards for schemas, data contracts, observability, testing, and deployment.
• Mentor engineers and guide design reviews across the organization.
• Partner with stakeholders to translate needs into scalable data solutions.

Skills

Data engineering

Distributed systems

Cloud platforms

Python/Java/Scala

Streaming pipelines

Data modeling

Observability

Mentoring

Stakeholder influence

Communication

Tools

Databricks

Apache Kafka

Flink

Spark

Kubernetes

AWS

Azure

Job description

Job Description

The Role

The Staff Data Engineer is an expert-level individual contributor who sets technical direction for complex Motorsports data engineering initiatives. This role works independently with broad latitude, applies deep expertise and sound judgment to ambiguous problems, and delivers solutions with measurable impact across teams and functional areas. The role will lead architecture and engineering practices for real-time data ingestion, telemetry, data quality, cloud platforms, and race-day operational systems. The Staff Data Engineer will influence technical decisions across the organization, mentor engineers, and partner with engineering, data science, platform, product, and racing stakeholders to deliver durable business outcomes.

What You’ll Do

• Set technical direction and develop target-state architecture for complex, cross-system data platforms and products.
• Lead large, high-visibility initiatives that integrate multiple teams, disciplines, technologies, and stakeholder needs.
• Design and implement innovative, scalable solutions for real-time ingestion, telemetry, event and session data, data quality, and analytical products.
• Exercise independent judgment to analyze complex problems, select appropriate methods, evaluate tradeoffs, and make durable technical decisions.
• Establish and own measurable technical and operational outcomes, including reliability, data quality, throughput, cycle time, recovery, and service-level performance.
• Develop standards, policies, methods, and reusable patterns for schemas, data contracts, observability, testing, deployment, security, and recovery.
• Lead technical planning, dependency management, risk identification, and sequencing for roadmap and race-critical work.
• Anticipate and elevate risks that could affect customers, race operations, delivery commitments, or functional outcomes, while providing actionable recommendations.
• Improve operational reliability through incident leadership, root-cause analysis, automation, runbooks, and permanent corrective actions.
• Influence adoption of new approaches through data, clear communication, persuasion, and collaboration across teams with differing priorities or practices.
• Serve as a technical resource and indirect leader by mentoring engineers, guiding design reviews, and raising engineering capability across the organization.
• Partner with stakeholders to understand customer and business needs and translate them into scalable data solutions.
• Champion change management and continuously improve engineering processes, tools, and ways of working.

Your Skills & Abilities (Required Qualifications)

• Deep expertise in data engineering, distributed systems, cloud platforms, and production software development.
• Demonstrated experience setting technical direction and delivering complex solutions spanning multiple teams or functional areas.
• Strong programming experience in Python, Java, Scala, or a comparable language.
• Experience designing and operating streaming and batch data pipelines at production scale.
• Strong knowledge of data modeling, schema evolution, data quality, observability, testing, deployment, and incident response.
• Demonstrated ability to work independently on ambiguous problems and make decisions with broad business and technical implications.
• Experience influencing stakeholders and gaining adoption of new architectures, processes, or technical practices without relying on direct authority.
• Strong communication, collaboration, technical writing, and mentoring skills.

What Will Give You a Competitive Edge (Preferred Qualifications)

• Experience with Databricks, Apache Kafka, Flink, Spark, Kubernetes, AWS, Azure, or comparable technologies.
• Experience with real-time telemetry, event processing, time-series data, or latency-sensitive production workloads.
• Experience supporting systems during high-availability or time-critical operating periods.
• Experience with data science, machine learning, analytics, or engineering strategy teams.
• Experience establishing engineering standards, technical communities of practice, or cross-functional architecture forums.
• Interest in motorsports, vehicle systems, race strategy, or performance engineering.

GM behaviors

Winning with integrity through candid, transparent, respectful, and safe decisions. Committing to customers by understanding stakeholder needs and delivering high-quality outcomes. Innovating and embracing change through experimentation, learning, and continuous improvement. Speaking fearlessly by raising risks, challenging assumptions respectfully, and offering actionable solutions. Moving with urgency by focusing on high-impact work, anticipating obstacles, and flagging delays early. Being inclusive by inviting diverse perspectives and creating space for open dialogue. Leading as one team by providing context, clarifying ownership, and aligning cross‑functional partners. Owning the outcome by following through on commitments, addressing gaps, and considering enterprise impact.

Success measures

• Measurable improvement in reliability, observability, data quality, and recovery readiness for critical data products.
• More predictable delivery through improved architecture, dependency management, sequencing, and flow metrics.
• Reduced aging, carryover, rework, and recurring operational toil.
• Documented adoption of reusable data engineering standards and target‑state architecture.
• Stronger engineering capability through mentoring, design reviews, and knowledge sharing.
• Demonstrated impact on Motorsports functional outcomes and race‑day readiness.

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 160K-180K.
• 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.
• 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 categorized as remote. The selected candidate may be based anywhere in the country of work and is not expected to report to a GM worksite unless directed by their manager.
• Relocation benefits are available for candidates who qualify under company policy.

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