Staff Software Engineer - Build System Modernization

Description

The company builds software-defined vehicles and is looking for a software engineering leader to modernize and scale the build systems behind them.

The team is moving from a legacy Make-based build system to Bazel, an open-source build tool created by Google, to make builds faster, more reliable and more robust across engineering.

You will drive this work at scale, shape technical direction across teams and set ambitious platform goals.

You will also lead productivity and effectiveness work by finding opportunities, shaping strategy, improving processes and guiding change, linking initiatives to real value through innovation, learning and simplification.

You will work hands-on on hard and unusual problems, and coach and mentor others while balancing technical depth with empathy.

Responsibilities

• Assess current Make, test, dependency, toolchain and hardware workflows, then define a phased Bazel migration strategy and rollout plan.
• Build reusable Bazel rules, macros, toolchains, platforms, configuration patterns and repository standards for embedded software.
• Move embedded applications, libraries, generated code, firmware, cross-compilation flows and platform variants to Bazel, proving build parity and reproducibility.
• Connect Bazel to enterprise CI/CD, testing, release, artifact, deployment, observability, security and infrastructure workflows.
• Improve the platform through caching, parallelism, reliability practices, documentation, training, retirement of Make and ongoing improvement.
• Track progress by repositories migrated with validated build and test parity, faster clean and incremental builds, CI queues and developer feedback, higher reproducibility, approved hermetic-toolchain adoption, cache effectiveness and CI capacity, and lower build, pipeline and flaky-test rates.
• Shorten diagnosis and recovery time, and ensure releases have full artifact provenance, test evidence and security-policy compliance.
• Drive strong developer adoption, reduce support burden and show measurable productivity gains.
• Evaluate AI-enabled engineering workflows using measurable quality, adoption and productivity outcomes.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in software engineering or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years of software development experience.
• 15 years of software development experience.
• Deep understanding of software architecture for real-time systems.
• Experience shipping high-quality, safety-critical products.
• Exceptional problem-solving and analytical skills with sharp attention to detail.
• Ability to manage multiple projects and priorities in a fast-paced environment.
• Ability to make decisions and act in an action-oriented environment.
• Strong record building and maintaining production software systems, with proficiency in Python and at least one other language used in engineering tooling.
• Experience in automotive, embedded, safety-related, calibration or systems-engineering environments.
• Experience with large-scale migration from Make or shell-based build orchestration to Bazel.
• Experience with AI-assisted developer productivity, coding agents, code intelligence, knowledge retrieval or workflow orchestration.
• Experience evaluating AI-enabled engineering workflows using measurable quality, adoption and productivity outcomes.
• Preferred: Master's degree or PhD in computer science, software engineering, machine learning, AI or a related field.
• Preferred: Experience in embedded software, automotive software, systems engineering or safety-related toolchains.
• Preferred: Familiarity with the company's engineering tools, engineering workflows or internal platform environments.
• Preferred: Experience building AI assistants, coding agents or domain-specific AI capabilities for engineers.
• Preferred: Experience with knowledge systems, vector search, ranking, workflow orchestration or code intelligence platforms.
• Preferred: Experience supporting large engineering communities through reusable tools, templates and automation.
• Preferred: Experience assessing AI quality in production using measures such as acceptance rate, time saved, precision and recall, hallucination reduction or workflow completion rate.

Conditions

Pay information is a good-faith estimate based on what a successful applicant might be paid under applicable state law.

Base salary range: 171,150 to 288,500. The offer within this range depends on job-related factors and the selected candidate's geography.

Incentive pay is based on company performance, job level and individual performance.

The role is remote. If you live within a set mile radius of a company hub, you will be expected to report there three times a week, or as your manager directs.

Selected candidates may be required to complete a role-related assessment and/or a pre-employment screening before starting.

The company is committed to a workplace free of unlawful discrimination that genuinely includes everyone.

Benefits

• Health and wellbeing options include medical, dental and vision cover, a Health Savings Account, Flexible Spending Accounts, sickness and accident benefits, life insurance and an employee assistance program.
• Also included are a retirement savings plan, paid vacation and holidays, tuition assistance, GM vehicle discounts and more.
• Relocation benefits are available for candidates who qualify under company policy.
• After a successful motor vehicle report review, you may join a company vehicle evaluation program to drive and assess a company vehicle. Participants must buy or lease a qualifying vehicle every four years unless a limited exception applies.