{"id":2228675,"url":"https://alion.io/job/general-motors-principal-software-engineer-build-system-modernization","title":"Principal Software Engineer - Build System Modernization","company":{"id":1705,"name":"General Motors","domain":"gm.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/general-motors-europe","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workday","truth_index":null},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"board_field","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Austin, United States","Mountain View, United States","United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":["US"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":158000,"max_usd":306000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":233},"experience_years_min":15,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Bazel","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Hallucination","optional":true},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-25T00:00:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-25","last_verified_at":"2026-10-18T07:56:41Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":23,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":23},"description":"Job Description\nThe Role:\nGeneral Motors is seeking a software engineering leader to modernize and scale the build systems that support software-defined vehicles. This role will help lead the transition from a legacy Make-based system to Bazel, Google’s open-source build tool, improving speed, reliability, and robustness across the engineering organization.The successful candidate will drive this capability at scale, influence technical direction across teams, and help establish lofty platform capability goals.\nWhat You'll Do:\nLead software engineering productivity and effectiveness by identifying opportunities, shaping strategies, improving processes, guiding change, and connecting initiatives to deliver greater value through innovation, learning, and simplification.\nLead high-impact efforts hands-on, solve complex and unusual problems, and communicate effectively as a coach and mentor while balancing technical command with empathy.\nModernize a large embedded-software build and test system by transitioning legacy Make- or shell-based workflows to Bazel and establishing scalable, reproducible, secure, and developer-friendly infrastructure across repositories, toolchains, CI/CD, testing, and release processes.\nAssess current build, test, dependency, toolchain, and hardware workflows to define a phased Bazel migration strategy and rollout model.\nDesign and implement reusable Bazel rules, macros, toolchains, platforms, configuration patterns, and repository standards, while migrating embedded applications, libraries, generated code, firmware, cross-compilation flows, and platform variants with validated build parity and reproducibility.\nIntegrate Bazel with enterprise CI/CD, testing, release, artifact, deployment, observability, security, and infrastructure workflows, and optimize the platform through caching, parallelism, reliability practices, documentation, training, legacy Make retirement, and continuous improvement.\nMeasure success through target repositories migrated with validated build and test parity; faster clean and incremental builds, CI queues, and developer feedback; increased reproducibility, approved hermetic-toolchain adoption, cache effectiveness, and CI capacity; and lower build, pipeline, and flaky-test rates.\nImprove diagnosis and recovery time while ensuring complete artifact provenance, test evidence, and security-policy compliance for releases, strong developer adoption, reduced support burden, and measurable productivity improvement.\nHold a bachelor’s degree in software engineering or have equivalent experience, along with 15 years of software development experience.\nBring a deep understanding of real-time software architecture and experience shipping high-quality, safety-critical products in automotive, embedded, safety-related, calibration, or systems-engineering environments.\nDemonstrate exceptional problem-solving and analytical abilities, keen attention to detail, and the ability to manage multiple projects and priorities in fast-paced, action-oriented decision-making environments.\nBring strong expertise building and maintaining production software systems, proficiency in Python and at least one additional engineering-tooling language, and experience with AI-assisted developer productivity, coding agents, code intelligence, knowledge retrieval, or workflow orchestration. \nEvaluate AI-enabled engineering workflows using measurable quality, adoption, and productivity outcomes.\nKey Deliverables\nAssess current Make-based build, test, dependency, toolchain, and hardware workflows, then define a phased Bazel migration strategy and rollout model.\nDesign and implement reusable Bazel rules, macros, toolchains, platforms, configuration patterns, and repository standards for embedded software.\nMigrate embedded applications, libraries, generated code, firmware, cross-compilation flows, and platform variants while ensuring build parity and reproducibility.\nIntegrate Bazel with enterprise CI/CD, testing, release, artifact, deployment, observability, security, and infrastructure workflows.\nOptimize and operationalize the platform through caching, parallelism, reliability practices, documentation, training, legacy Make retirement, and continuous improvement.\nMeasures of Success\nTarget repositories migrated with validated build and test parity.\nReduced clean and incremental build time, CI queue time, and developer feedback time.\nIncreased reproducibility, approved hermetic-toolchain adoption, cache effectiveness, and CI capacity.\nLower build, pipeline, and flaky-test rates, with improved diagnosis and recovery time.\nComplete artifact provenance, test evidence, and security-policy compliance for releases.\nStrong developer adoption, reduced support burden, and measurable productivity improvement.\nYour Skills & Abilities (Required Qualifications):\nBachelor's degree in software engineering or or equivalent experience\n15+ years of experience in software development \nDeep understanding of software architecture for real time systems \nExperience shipping high quality safety critical products \nExceptional problem-solving and analytical abilities, with a keen attention to detail \nDemonstrated ability to manage multiple projects and priorities in a fast-paced environment. \nDemonstrated ability to work in an action-oriented decision-making environment \nStrong expertise building and maintaining production software systems, with proficiency in Python and at least one additional language used in engineering tooling environments\nAutomotive, embedded, safety-related, calibration, or systems-engineering environments.\nLarge-scale migration from Make or shell-based build orchestration to Bazel.\nAI-assisted developer productivity, coding agents, code intelligence, knowledge retrieval, or workflow orchestration.\nEvaluation of AI-enabled engineering workflows using measurable quality, adoption, and productivity outcomes.\nWhat Will Give You A Competitive Edge (Preferred Qualifications):\nMaster’s degree or PhD in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Machine Learning, AI, or a related field\nExperience in embedded software development, automotive software, systems engineering, or safety-related toolchains\nFamiliarity with GM engineering tools, engineering workflows, or internal platform environments\nExperience building AI assistants, coding agents, or domain-specific AI capabilities for engineers\nExperience with knowledge systems, vector search, ranking, workflow orchestration, or code intelligence platforms\nExperience supporting large engineering communities through reusable tools, templates, and automation\nExperience evaluating AI quality in production systems using measurable outcomes such as acceptance rate, time saved, precision and recall, hallucination reduction, or workflow completion rate\nCompany Vehicle\nUpon successful completion of a motor vehicle report review, you will be eligible to participate in a company vehicle evaluation program, though which you will be assigned a General Motors vehicle to drive and evaluate. Note: program participants are required to purchase/lease a qualifying GM vehicle every four years unless one of a limited number of exceptions applies.\nCompensation\nThe compensation information is a good faith estimate only. It is based on what a successful applicant might be paid in accordance with applicable state laws. The actual base salary a successful candidate will be offered within this range will vary based on factors relevant to the position, as well as geography of the selected candidate.\nThe Salary Range\nThe range for this role is 201,000 and 400,000. The actual base salary a successful candidate will be offered within this range will vary based on factors relevant to the position.\nBonus Potential\nAn incentive pay program offers payouts based on company performance, job level, and individual performance.\nBenefits\nGM 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.\n\nThis role is based remotely, but if the selected candidate lives within a specific mile radius of a GM hub, they will be expected to report to the location three times a week {or other frequency dictated by your manager}.\n\nRelocation benefits are available for candidates who qualify under company policy.\n\nAbout GM\nOur vision is a world with Zero Crashes, Zero Emissions and Zero Congestion and we embrace the responsibility to lead the change that will make our world better, safer and more equitable for all.\nWhy Join Us\nWe believe we all must make a choice every day - individually and collectively - to drive meaningful change through our words, our deeds and our culture. Every day, we want every employee to feel they belong to one General Motors team.\nBenefits Overview\nFrom day one, we're looking out for your well-being-at work and at home-so you can focus on realizing your ambitions. Learn how GM supports a rewarding career that rewards you personally by visiting Total Rewards resources.\nNon-Discrimination and Equal Employment Opportunities (U.S.)\nGeneral 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.\nAll employment decisions are made on a non-discriminatory basis without regard to sex, race, color, national origin, citizenship status, religion, age, disability, pregnancy or maternity status, sexual orientation, gender identity, status as a veteran or protected veteran, or any other similarly protected status in accordance with federal, state and local laws.\nWe encourage interested candidates to review the key responsibilities and qualifications for each role and apply for any positions that match their skills and capabilities. Applicants in the recruitment process may be required, where applicable, to successfully complete a role-related assessment(s) and/or a pre-employment screening prior to beginning employment. To learn more, visit How we Hire.\nAccommodations\nGeneral Motors offers opportunities to all job seekers including individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation to assist with your job search or application for employment, email us or call us at 1-800-865-7580. In your email, please include a description of the specific accommodation you are requesting as well as the job title and requisition number of the position for which you are applying.","description_format":"text","description_chars":10817,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":15,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Life insurance","Retirement plans"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":true,"industries":["Automotive Manufacturing"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-10T17:37:23Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 795 · green card filings: 1","filings_12m":795,"filings_prev_12m":812,"green_card_filings_12m":1,"median_offered_wage_usd":147456,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-15T11:24:14+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":344}],"liveness":{"score":13,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.385,"p_room":0.35,"age_days":22,"expected_fill_days":5,"reasons":["conf:1","velocity","win:tail","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/general-motors-principal-software-engineer-build-system-modernization","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/general-motors-principal-software-engineer-build-system-modernization.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-18T20:19:45Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":24277,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-19T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":1705},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=1705"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fgeneral-motors-principal-software-engineer-build-system-modernization"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fgeneral-motors-principal-software-engineer-build-system-modernization"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fgeneral-motors-principal-software-engineer-build-system-modernization"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/general-motors-principal-software-engineer-build-system-modernization\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fgeneral-motors-principal-software-engineer-build-system-modernization"}]}