Staff / Principal Software Engineer, In-Vehicle AI Experiences

General Motors; Mountain View (CA); Hybrid; USD 189,000 - 290,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Company vehicle

Relocation benefits

Job summary

General Motors in Mountain View, CA is seeking hands-on Staff and Principal Software Engineers to build in-vehicle AI experiences. You will work primarily in Kotlin and Android Automotive, owning features across the in-vehicle assistant stack, including conversation design, NLU, LLM behavior, vehicle integration, and UI.

This is a small, fast-moving team with substantial autonomy, where you will shape roadmaps, mentor engineers, and deliver production-ready software that improves the driver

Qualifications

• Significant production software experience.
• Staff: 8+ years or more; Principal: 10+ years.
• Strong hands-on software development in Kotlin, Java, C++, Python, with focus on Kotlin and Android.

Responsibilities

• Define and build driver-facing capabilities from concept through production.
• Own features end to end from driver requests through on-device fulfillment and UI.
• Write production Kotlin and contribute to adjacent technologies (Python-based agents, NLU, LLM orchestration, APIs).
• Prototype new experiences, evaluate in vehicle environments, turn ideas into reliable products.
• Partner with Product, UX, conversation design, vehicle software, systems, platform, safety, privacy, and validation teams.
• Make pragmatic tradeoffs among value, speed, reliability, latency, offline behavior, and maintainability.
• Diagnose complex issues across app, assistant, vehicle, and cloud boundaries.
• Use AI-assisted development workflows to accelerate design and testing while keeping quality.

Skills

Kotlin/Java/C++/Python proficiency

Leadership & delivery

System design

Clear communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Job description

Work Arrangement

This role is categorized as hybrid. This means the successful candidate is expected to report to

Job Description

Work Arrangement

This role is categorized as hybrid. This means the successful candidate is expected to report to Mountain View, CA three times per week at minimum or other frequency dictated by the business.

The Role

GM's Vehicle AI Experiences team is building the next generation of intelligent experiences for GM vehicles. Our mandate is simple: own what the driver can do and how it feels.

We are seeking hands-on Staff and Principal Software Engineers who can turn ambiguous customer problems into high-quality, production-ready experiences. You will work primarily in Kotlin and Android Automotive, while owning features across the broader in-vehicle assistant stack—including conversation design, natural language understanding, LLM behavior, vehicle integration, connected services, and UI.

The center of gravity for this role is product engineering rather than AI research or agent-platform specialization. We value broad engineering judgment, rapid learning, and a record of shipping complete products more than expertise in any particular AI framework.

This is a small, fast-moving team. You will have substantial autonomy, remain close to the code, help determine what we build, and improve how the larger organization delivers software.

What You'll Do

• Define and build driver-facing capabilities from concept through production.
• Own features end to end—from the driver's request and conversational behavior through on-device fulfillment, vehicle integration, UI, validation, and iteration.
• Write production Kotlin and contribute across adjacent technologies such as Python-based agent definitions, NLU, LLM orchestration, APIs, and connected services.
• Rapidly prototype new experiences, evaluate them in realistic vehicle environments, and turn successful ideas into reliable products.
• Partner with Product, UX, conversation design, vehicle software, systems, platform, safety, privacy, and validation teams.
• Make pragmatic tradeoffs among customer value, speed, reliability, latency, offline behavior, resource constraints, maintainability, and driver distraction.
• Diagnose complex issues across application, assistant, vehicle, and cloud boundaries.
• Use AI-assisted development workflows to accelerate design, implementation, testing, debugging, and codebase understanding while maintaining a high quality bar.
• Establish reusable engineering patterns and lightweight workflows that help the team deliver faster.
• Mentor engineers through implementation, design reviews, code reviews, and direct technical collaboration.
• Help shape the roadmap for in-vehicle AI experiences and identify opportunities that emerging technology makes possible.

Your Skills & Abilities (Required Qualifications)

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• Significant experience building and shipping production software:
  • Staff: Minimum 8+ years.
  • Principal: Minimum 10+ years.
• Strong hands-on software development skills in Kotlin, Java, C++, Python, or a comparable language, with the ability and interest to work primarily in Kotlin and Android.
• A record of independently delivering complex, user-facing features across multiple components or systems.
• Ability to turn ambiguous customer or business goals into concrete designs, incremental plans, and working software.
• Strong system-design, debugging, testing, and operational-quality judgment.
• Experience leading technical work across organizational or functional boundaries.
• Clear communication with engineers, designers, product partners, and technical leadership.
• Demonstrated ability to learn unfamiliar technologies quickly and apply them pragmatically.
• Experience using modern AI-assisted software-development workflows effectively and responsibly.

What Will Give You a Competitive Edge (Preferred Qualifications)

Experience in one or more of the following areas is valuable. We do not expect candidates to have all of them:

• Android or Android Automotive OS, including Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, Android services, IPC, or system applications.
• Automotive, infotainment, embedded, robotics, consumer-device, or other resource-constrained software.
• Vehicle integration, including VHAL, vehicle services, signals, APIs, or automotive networks.
• Voice assistants or conversational products involving ASR, NLU, TTS, dialogue systems, or conversation evaluation.
• LLM-enabled product development, including tool use, orchestration, prompt design, grounding, evaluation, or fallback behavior.
• Building intuitive UX for multimodal or safety-conscious environments.
• Python, cloud-connected services, authentication, or distributed systems.
• Automated testing, observability, performance analysis, CI/CD, and field-quality feedback systems.

Staff-Level Scope

As a Staff Engineer, you will independently own a major capability or product domain. You will lead ambiguous cross-functional initiatives, establish effective technical patterns, and raise the delivery and quality bar for the team while remaining deeply involved in implementation.

Principal-Level Scope

As a Principal Engineer, you will shape technical and product direction across multiple capabilities. You will resolve difficult architectural and organizational boundaries, influence strategy across teams, and multiply the effectiveness of Staff and Senior engineers. You will remain hands‑on, focusing direct implementation on high-risk, architecture-defining, and cross-cutting work.

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 the California Bay Area.

• The salary range for this role is ($189,300 - $290,000). 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.

Company Vehicle

Upon successful completion of a motor vehicle report review, you will be eligible to participate in a company vehicle evaluation program, through which you will be assigned a General Motors vehicle to drive and evaluate. Note: program participants are required to purchase/lease a qualifying GM vehicle every four years unless one of a limited number of exceptions applies.

This Job may be eligible for relocation benefits.

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.

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.

Accommodations

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