Senior Software Engineer, AV Frameworks

Job Description

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 vehicle, 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.

• 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, back pressure, 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, Flat Buffers, Cap’n Proto, zero‑copy techniques, record/re‑simulation pipelines.
• Advanced networking/IO: , RDMA/PCIe messaging, kernel/bpf‑based observability, packet capture and analysis.
• Real‑time Linux and system constraints (scheduling, CPU isolation, priority inversion mitigation, bounded latency).
• Tracing and performance tooling: perf, LTTng, eBPF, flame graphs; 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.

• Salary range: $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: 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, including 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.

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,…