Principal Software Engineer – Core OS, Vehicle Compute

At General Motors our product teams are redefining mobility. Through a human-centered design process we create vehicles and experiences that are designed not just to be seen but to be felt. Were turning todays impossible into tomorrows standard from breakthrough hardware and battery systems to intuitive design intelligent software and next-generation safety and entertainment features.

Every day our products move millions of people as we aim to make driving safer smarter and more connected shaping the future of transportation on a global scale

The Role

The Core OS group is a newly formed team building the operating-system foundation GMs next generation of vehicle software runs on: hypervisors and virtualization safety partitioning and health management container runtime and workload orchestration and the boot and secure-boot chain that let Linux Android and QNX share a single high-compute platform safely and efficiently. As Principal Software Engineer you are the senior technical authority and system architect for that layer youll determine which platform problems matter most then define the architecture and drive the solutions that solve them setting long-term direction for virtualization partitioning and platform services across GMs vehicle compute. Your influence extends well past your own code: establishing the technical interfaces to the silicon guest OS and functional-safety organizations driving decisions with hypervisor and silicon partners and guiding engineers across multiple teams toward a foundation that must hold up to production performance reliability and safety requirements in millions of vehicles.

What Youll Do

• Define and drive the architecture and long-term roadmap for GMs Core OS layer including hypervisors virtualization virtual machine lifecycle resource partitioning inter-virtual-machine communication and the boot and secure-boot chain.

• Architect the multi-operating-system foundation that enables embedded Linux including Yocto-based distributions Android and QNX to run on shared vehicle compute with consistent platform services and interfaces.

• Establish the platform safety architecture including freedom from interference between partitions health monitoring fault detection and recovery in partnership with functional safety and cybersecurity organizations.

• Define the container and workload-management architecture for on-vehicle execution including isolation lifecycle management resource governance and updateability.

• Own the system-level performance strategy across compute efficiency latency boot time memory footprint and deterministic behavior and lead optimization efforts across software and hardware boundaries.

• Drive build-versus-buy and technology-selection decisions for hypervisor real-time operating system and runtime components and lead technical relationships with the corresponding suppliers.

• Provide technical mentorship and direction to Staff and Senior Software Engineers while establishing engineering standards and review practices for the new organization.

• Lead complex investigations and root-cause analyses across virtualization operating-system and silicon boundaries. Represent Core OS in technical councils architecture reviews and cross-functional design forums and define ownership boundaries with adjacent platform teams.

Your Skills & Abilities (Required Qualifications)

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science Electrical Engineering Computer Engineering or a related field; or equivalent experience.

• Fifteen or more years of experience in embedded kernel-level or systems software development including production-grade systems.

• Proven experience architecting operating-system or virtualization platforms for high-performance or safety-critical systems.

• Deep expertise in at least two of the following areas:

• Type 1 hypervisors and virtualization

• Real-time operating systems

• Embedded Linux internals

• Secure boot and platform integrity

• Strong knowledge of Arm system-on-chip (SoC) architecture including memory management interrupt and input/output virtualization and hardware-enforced isolation mechanisms.

• Experience leading multi-team or cross-functional technical programs from concept through production.

• Proficiency with modern development tools and practices including Git GitHub continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) automated testing and performance profiling.

• Strong communication and influence skills across technical cross-functional and executive audiences.

What Will Give You a Competitive Edge (Preferred Qualifications)

• Masters degree or equivalent experience in Computer Science Electrical Engineering Computer Engineering or a related field.

• Hands-on architecture experience with hypervisor technologies such as Gunyah QNX Hypervisor Xen or KVM/Arm including virtio-based device virtualization.

• Expertise in automotive functional safety including Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL) decomposition safety-island architecture freedom-from-interference arguments and safety-framework integration.

• Experience with container runtimes and workload orchestration in resource-constrained or embedded environments.

• Familiarity with Yocto-based Linux distributions Android Open Source Project (AOSP) or Android Automotive and QNX Software Development Platform (SDP) as guest or host environments.

• Familiarity with health monitoring fail-operational and fail-safe mechanisms and platform-resiliency design.

• Experience with Adaptive Automotive Open System Architecture (AUTOSAR) Software Defined Vehicle Open Architecture for Embedded Edge (SOAFEE) or comparable automotive platform standards.

• Experience with over-the-air (OTA) and continuous-update architectures.

• Contributions to open-source virtualization or operating-system projects.

• Proven ability to set technical vision influence across organizations and represent a company in cross-industry engagements.