Staff Software Engineer - Build System Modernization

General Motors Africa & Middle East; Brighton Charter Township (MI); On-site; USD 171,000 - 289,000; Full time

Job summary

General Motors is seeking a software engineering leader to modernize the build systems for software-defined vehicles, migrating from Make to Bazel and scaling across the engineering organization. You will design reusable Bazel rules, macros, toolchains, platforms, configuration patterns, and repository standards, while integrating with enterprise CI/CD and security workflows.

You will mentor engineers, drive cross-team collaboration, and measure success by improved build parity, faster builds,

Qualifications

• Master’s degree or PhD in CS, SE, ML, AI, or related field.
• Experience in embedded automotive software and safety-related toolchains.
• Familiarity with GM engineering tools and internal platform environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead modernization of embedded build/test systems and migrate to Bazel.
• Design reusable Bazel rules, toolchains, and configurations.
• Integrate Bazel with enterprise CI/CD and security workflows.
• Measure success via parity, faster builds, and reliability.
• Mentor engineers and drive cross-team collaboration.

Skills

AI tooling experience

Code intelligence platforms

Vector search

Education

Master’s or PhD in CS/SE/ML/AI

Tools

GM engineering tools

Job description

The Role:

General Motors is seeking a software engineering leader to modernize and scale the build systems that support software‑defined vehicles. This role will help lead the transition from a legacy Make‑based system to Bazel, Google’s open‑source build tool, improving speed, reliability, and robustness across the engineering organization. The successful candidate will drive this capability at scale, influence technical direction across teams, and help establish lofty platform capability goals.

What You'll Do:

Lead software engineering productivity and effectiveness by identifying opportunities, shaping strategies, improving processes, guiding change, and connecting initiatives to deliver greater value through innovation, learning, and simplification. Lead high‑impact efforts hands‑on, solve complex and unusual problems, and communicate effectively as a coach and mentor while balancing technical command with empathy. Modernize a large embedded‑software build and test system by transitioning legacy Make‑ or shell‑based workflows to Bazel and establishing scalable, reproducible, secure, and developer‑friendly infrastructure across repositories, toolchains, CI/CD, testing, and release processes. Assess current build, test, dependency, toolchain, and hardware workflows to define a phased Bazel migration strategy and rollout model. Design and implement reusable Bazel rules, macros, toolchains, platforms, configuration patterns, and repository standards, while migrating embedded applications, libraries, generated code, firmware, cross‑compilation flows, and platform variants with validated build parity and reproducibility. Integrate Bazel with enterprise CI/CD, testing, release, artifact, deployment, observability, security, and infrastructure workflows, and optimize the platform through caching, parallelism, reliability practices, documentation, training, legacy Make retirement, and continuous improvement. Measure success through target repositories migrated with validated build and test parity; faster clean and incremental builds, CI queues, and developer feedback; increased reproducibility, approved hermetic‑toolchain adoption, cache effectiveness, and CI capacity; and lower build, pipeline, and flaky‑test rates. Improve diagnosis and recovery time while ensuring complete artifact provenance, test evidence, and security‑policy compliance for releases, strong developer adoption, reduced support burden, and measurable productivity improvement.

Key Deliverables:

Assess current Make‑based build, test, dependency, toolchain, and hardware workflows, then define a phased Bazel migration strategy and rollout model. Design and implement reusable Bazel rules, macros, toolchains, platforms, configuration patterns, and repository standards for embedded software. Migrate embedded applications, libraries, generated code, firmware, cross‑compilation flows, and platform variants while ensuring build parity and reproducibility. Integrate Bazel with enterprise CI/CD, testing, release, artifact, deployment, observability, security, and infrastructure workflows. Optimize and operationalise the platform through caching, parallelism, reliability practices, documentation, training, legacy Make retirement, and continuous improvement.

Measures of Success:

Target repositories migrated with validated build and test parity. Reduced clean and incremental build time, CI queue time, and developer feedback time. Increased reproducibility, approved hermetic‑toolchain adoption, cache effectiveness, and CI capacity. Lower build, pipeline, and flaky‑test rates, with improved diagnosis and recovery time. Complete artifact provenance, test evidence, and security‑policy compliance for releases. Strong developer adoption, reduced support burden, and measurable productivity improvement.

What Will Give You A Competitive Edge (Preferred Qualifications):

Master’s degree or PhD in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Machine Learning, AI, or a related field. Experience in embedded software development, automotive software, systems engineering, or safety‑related toolchains. Familiarity with GM engineering tools, engineering workflows, or internal platform environments. Experience building AI assistants, coding agents, or domain‑specific AI capabilities for engineers. Experience with knowledge systems, vector search, ranking, workflow orchestration, or code intelligence platforms. Experience supporting large engineering communities through reusable tools, templates, and automation. Experience evaluating AI quality in production systems using measurable outcomes such as acceptance rate, time saved, precision and recall, hallucination reduction, or workflow completion rate.

Company Vehicle:

Upon successful completion of a motor vehicle report review, you will be eligible to participate in a company vehicle evaluation program, though 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.

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

The range for this role is 171,150 and 288,500. 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.

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

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.

Our Company

We are leading the change to make our world better, safer and more equitable for all through our actions and how we behave. Learn more about: Our Company Our Culture How we hire Our diverse team of employees bring their collective passion for engineering, technology and design to deliver on our vision of a world with Zero Crashes, Zero Emissions and Zero Congestion. We are looking for adventure‑seekers and imaginative thought leaders to help us transform mobility. Explore our global locations We are determined to lead change for the world through technology, ingenuity and harnessing the creativity of our diverse team. Join us to help lead the change that will make our world better, safer and more equitable for all by becoming a member of GM’s Talent Community (beamery.com).