Senior Software Engineer

Description

The Role

We're AV Frameworks within AV Platform Core at General Motors. We build the foundational frameworks that power robotics and autonomous capabilities across distributed compute - with a focus on inter-process communication (IPC), middleware, and developer experience that make complex systems reliable, observable, and fast.

As a Senior Software Engineer, you will design and deliver the core communication and runtime building blocks used by AV/Robotics applications on vehicles, on benches, and in simulation. You'll work across C++ systems, Linux, and networking/IPC to achieve low-latency messaging, deterministic scheduling, and production-grade reliability at scale.

What you'll do

• Own design and implementation of high-performance IPC and middleware primitives (publish/subscribe, shared memory, serialization, discovery, QoS).

• Drive latency, throughput, and determinism improvements through profiling, tracing, benchmarking, and targeted optimizations.

• Build developer-facing APIs, tooling, and documentation that improve ergonomics, correctness, and velocity for internal customers.

• Deliver platform-ready components with observability (metrics, logs, traces), robust fault handling, and reproducible performance characteristics.

• Collaborate cross-functionally with platform OS, drivers, safety, controls, perception, and tooling teams to integrate end-to-end solutions.

• Apply production rigor: code reviews, testing strategies (unit, integration, soak), performance and regression gates, and rollout/rollback discipline.

• Mentor engineers, contribute to design reviews, and raise the bar on engineering excellence.

• BS/MS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent experience.

• 7+ years building systems-level software in modern C++ (C++17/20/23) or Rust on Linux.

• Deep knowledge of concurrency, memory management, lock-free or low-contention patterns, and performance profiling.

• Hands-on experience with IPC/messaging systems and distributed systems fundamentals (serialization, backpressure, flow control, QoS).

• Strong understanding of networking (sockets, TCP/UDP, multicast, NICs, buffers, MTU, packetization) and time synchronization concepts.

• Proficiency with build and CI tooling (Bazel/Buck/CMake, test frameworks, artifact/versioning strategies).

• Robotics/AV middleware: ROS 2, DDS, gRPC, ZeroMQ, eCAL, shared memory IPC.

• Serialization and data: Protobuf, FlatBuffers, Cap'n Proto, zero-copy techniques, record/resimulation pipelines.

• Advanced networking/IO: io_uring, RDMA/PCIe messaging, kernel/bpf-based observability, packet capture and analysis.

• Real-time Linux and systems constraints (scheduling, CPU isolation, priority inversion mitigation, bounded latency).

• Tracing and performance tooling: perf, LTTng, eBPF, flamegraphs; defining and enforcing performance SLOs.

• Safety and reliability awareness (diagnostics, failover, degraded modes, basics of ISO 26262 considerations for software components).

• Secondary languages and tooling: Python/Go for tooling/integration

• The salary range for this role is $154,420 to $235,900. 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.

• 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.