Principal Software Engineer - Embedded Software Platform

General Motors is an automotive company developing software-defined vehicle technologies and related engineering platforms. The Principal Software Engineer will set enterprise technical direction for embedded software platforms, resolve cross-domain architectural challenges, establish standards and governance, and guide platform, automation, quality, testing, and build-system modernization across organizations.

Responsibilities:

• Set multi-year technical direction and target-state architecture for a broad, cross-domain capability or interconnected set of platform capabilities
• Identify systemic constraints and opportunities across the software lifecycle, then define the strategy, investment priorities, and sequencing required to address them
• Resolve the most ambiguous and consequential architectural tradeoffs spanning organizations, product lines, suppliers, technology stacks, and delivery cadences
• Establish enterprise-level principles, standards, governance, reliability expectations, and decision frameworks that scale beyond a single program or team
• Create leverage through platforms, automation, reusable patterns, data, and operating models that materially improve engineering effectiveness and product outcomes
• Influence senior and executive leaders through clear recommendations grounded in technical judgment, risk, cost, quality, and measurable business impact
• Lead through other technical leaders by developing principal and staff engineers, strengthening communities of practice, and raising the quality of architectural decisions
• Remain technically credible and selectively hands-on in the highest-value or highest-risk problems
• Set the strategy for a scalable virtual development platform spanning embedded, simulation, and cloud workloads. Define enterprise architecture and standards for CI/CD, GitOps, Kubernetes, Terraform and infrastructure as code, progressive delivery, artifact and environment management, security, compliance, and observability. Connect virtualized development to the broader vehicle software lifecycle and guide adoption across organizations
• Set the end-to-end architecture and policy for how vehicle software is built, composed, validated, promoted, and released. Define the quality-gating model, mainline-protection strategy, evidence standards, integration controls, and release-readiness framework across component, pillar, system, virtual, physical, and release-train flows. Establish the metrics and operating mechanisms that make quality signals trustworthy and delivery risk visible
• Set the long-term architecture and modernization strategy for embedded test execution across virtual and physical environments. Establish common approaches to configuration and variation management, change-impact analysis, risk-based regression, result-data modeling, diagnostics, APIs, analytics, and failure triage. Create a connected test ecosystem that improves traceability, execution efficiency, learning from test data, and decision quality across the vehicle software lifecycle
• Set the enterprise strategy for scalable embedded build systems and developer productivity. Define migration and convergence patterns for legacy Make or shell workflows and Bazel-based systems; establish standards for rules, toolchains, platforms, reproducibility, caching, security, provenance, and release integration; and guide adoption across repositories, teams, and product lines. Evaluate emerging AI-assisted engineering capabilities using clear quality, adoption, and productivity measures
• Define the future-state architecture and multi-year roadmap for the assigned domain and its interfaces with adjacent domains
• Establish principles, standards, governance, and decision rights that align independent teams and delivery organizations
• Lead the resolution of cross-domain technical risks involving architecture, quality, security, reliability, cost, scalability, and delivery continuity
• Advise senior and executive leadership on investment choices, program risk, platform health, and tradeoffs between local optimization and enterprise value
• Convene architecture reviews and technical communities that create durable alignment across engineering, validation, cloud, cybersecurity, quality, program management, and suppliers
• Sponsor high-leverage platform capabilities, automation, data models, and self-service experiences that improve outcomes at scale
• Define measures of success and ensure the organization uses evidence to prioritize improvements and verify impact
• Mentor and develop staff- and principal-level engineers and strengthen the organization’s technical leadership pipeline
• Represent GM’s technical direction with internal and external partners while maintaining a high bar for safety, quality, security, and customer impact

Requirements:

• Significant experience setting architecture and technical direction for CI/CD platforms spanning embedded, simulation, and cloud workloads
• Deep experience with Kubernetes cluster operations, Terraform or comparable infrastructure-as-code module design, and production cloud architecture
• Experience establishing enterprise standards for security, compliance, progressive delivery, artifact flows, and observability
• Demonstrated ability to drive adoption of a common virtual development platform across organizations or product lines
• Significant experience defining enterprise CI/CD architecture, quality-gating policy, and release-readiness frameworks for embedded or vehicle software
• Deep understanding of MCU and SoC build systems, embedded Linux, AUTOSAR, Yocto, containers, cross-compilation, or vehicle deployment workflows
• Experience governing GitHub Enterprise or comparable platforms, artifact promotion, virtual and hardware validation, and secure delivery controls
• Demonstrated ability to align multiple organizations around objective quality signals, integration standards, and release policy
• Significant experience setting architecture and modernization strategy for large-scale embedded test systems across virtual and physical environments
• Deep expertise in variation management, configuration comparison, change-impact analysis, and risk-based regression strategies
• Experience defining common test-result data models, APIs, analytics, diagnostics, and integrations across multiple engineering organizations
• Demonstrated ability to establish enterprise test standards that improve traceability, execution efficiency, failure triage, and decision quality
• Significant experience setting enterprise build-system architecture and developer-productivity strategy for embedded software
• Deep experience leading large-scale migration from Make or shell-based orchestration to Bazel or a comparable build platform
• Experience defining reusable rules, macros, toolchains, platforms, repository standards, artifact provenance, and reproducible build practices
• Demonstrated ability to guide adoption and measure quality, reliability, capacity, developer feedback, and productivity outcomes across organizations
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, software engineering, systems engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
• Typically, 15 or more years of experience developing, integrating, deploying, or validating software systems, including substantial experience leading architecture across organizations
• Deep understanding of embedded and real-time software architecture and a record of delivering high-quality safety-critical or otherwise mission-critical products
• Demonstrated enterprise or multi-organization technical influence, including the ability to align leaders and teams without direct authority
• Exceptional judgment in ambiguous, high-consequence technical decisions and the ability to communicate complex tradeoffs to technical and executive audiences
• Strong experience with production engineering platforms, software delivery systems, or engineering productivity capabilities; proficiency in Python and at least one additional language used in software or engineering-tooling environments
• Significant depth in at least one of the four specialization areas described above and the breadth to connect it to the others
• Experience designing or governing systems involving embedded software, Linux, Git, CI/CD, cloud platforms, infrastructure as code, test automation, artifact management, data, APIs, or platform reliability, as applicable to the selected specialization
• The selected candidate will be required to travel <25% for this role
• Experience in automotive, aerospace, defense, industrial, or another embedded, real-time, regulated, or safety-critical environment
• Knowledge of functional safety, ISO 26262, cybersecurity engineering, ASPICE, MISRA, AUTOSAR, or related engineering practices
• Experience with vehicle-level integration and validation, including SIL, CoSIM, vECU, HIL, benches, physical systems, or other virtual and hardware-based environments
• A record of creating enterprise standards, platform strategies, technical communities, developer self-service, reliability objectives, or measurable productivity improvements
• Advanced degree in a related technical field