Staff Software Engineer - Simulation Platform (Galileo)

Description

The company's autonomous-driving work depends on the group that builds simulation, evaluation and data platforms, tools, metrics and workflows.

The VTA team builds the core infrastructure for organizing and triggering tests, running simulations, analyzing results, and the data pipelines that link these steps.

Its users are autonomy and robotics engineers who need quick, dependable feedback on vehicle behavior, data engineers building large analysis workflows, and release teams that rely on evaluation results and metrics for readiness decisions.

You will work with Autonomy, Simulation, Systems Engineering, Safety, Data and other engineering groups to deliver developer experiences that are intuitive, reliable and scalable.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical direction and multi-year roadmap for the platform and related simulation capabilities.
• Create scalable systems that orchestrate and analyze millions of simulated miles and large volumes of test results.
• Lead cross-functional efforts that bring simulation, evaluation, data and developer tooling into everyday engineering and release work.
• Build capabilities for creating tests, managing test suites, orchestrating runs, storing results, processing data, visualizing output and performing quantitative analysis.
• Establish lasting architecture patterns for distributed systems, service interfaces, data-heavy workflows and cloud infrastructure.
• Find and fix bottlenecks in performance, reliability, cost, usability and operational scale, using measured outcomes to set priorities.
• Lead engineering quality through design and code reviews, automated testing, continuous integration, observability, incident reviews and clear ownership.
• Explain complex tradeoffs to stakeholders, flag risks and dependencies, and drive decisions across organizational boundaries.
• Mentor engineers through technical guidance, reusable patterns, documentation and direct feedback.
• Work with product and engineering leaders to turn customer needs into practical technical strategies and deliverables.
• Help shape the company's engineering culture and principles, with emphasis on customer impact, inclusion, continuous improvement and accountability.

Requirements

• A bachelor's degree or higher in computer science, robotics, engineering or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 7+ years building and running production software systems, platforms or infrastructure.
• A track record of technical leadership across teams, including strategies or architectures that other teams have adopted.
• Solid experience with distributed systems, service-oriented or microservice architectures, and data-intensive applications.
• Production experience in Python and at least one more language such as Go, C++, Java, TypeScript or similar.
• Experience with cloud platforms and modern delivery practices: CI/CD, automated testing, observability and operational excellence.
• Experience building developer tools, automation or platforms that raise engineering productivity and see wide internal adoption.
• Strong written and spoken communication, including explaining decisions, communicating risk and influencing varied stakeholders.
• Ability to work independently through ambiguity, prioritize high-impact work and deliver results across organizational boundaries.
• Competitive edge: experience with autonomous vehicles, robotics, simulation, validation, evaluation or other safety-critical or high-stakes systems.
• Competitive edge: experience designing, running and interpreting large-scale simulation or field experiments.
• Competitive edge: experience with test frameworks, scenario libraries, metrics systems, release gating or continuous evaluation pipelines.
• Competitive edge: experience with PostgreSQL or similar relational databases, and analytical technologies such as BigQuery, DuckDB or Amazon Redshift.
• Competitive edge: familiarity with data transformation tools such as dbt, Dataform or SQLMesh.
• Competitive edge: experience with ROS, Python/C++ interoperability, or visualization and dashboarding tools such as Streamlit or Looker.
• Competitive edge: experience optimizing systems under significant latency, throughput, reliability or cost constraints.
• Competitive edge: experience developing safety-critical software or applying rigorous validation and risk-management practices.
• Competitive edge: a track record of creating reusable frameworks, libraries or platform abstractions that help other teams move faster.

Conditions

Base salary range is $185,100 to $284,100. The actual offer within this range will depend on factors relevant to the position.

The role is hybrid: you are expected to report to a specific location at least 3 times a week, or at another frequency set by your manager.

Candidates may need to complete a role-related assessment and/or a pre-employment screening before starting.

The company prohibits unlawful discrimination and works to build an inclusive workplace where people belong.

Benefits

• Work on foundational technology that shapes how the company develops, validates and scales autonomous-driving systems, with broad technical scope and cross-functional influence.
• Health and wellbeing programs including medical, dental and vision coverage, Health Savings Account, Flexible Spending Accounts, retirement savings plan, sickness and accident benefits, life insurance, paid vacation and holidays, tuition assistance, employee assistance program, company vehicle discounts and more.
• Eligibility for relocation benefits may be available.
• After a successful motor vehicle report review, you may join the company vehicle evaluation program and drive and evaluate an assigned the company vehicle. Participants must buy or lease a qualifying GM vehicle every four years unless a limited exception applies.