Principal Software Engineering - Build System Modernization

General Motors, Markham, Ontario, Canada

The role

Job Description

General 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.

What you need

Bachelor's degree in software engineering or or equivalent experience
10+ to 15+ years of experience in software development
Deep understanding of software architecture for real time systems
Experience shipping high-quality safety critical products
Exceptional problem-solving and analytical abilities, with a keen attention to detail
Demonstrated ability to manage multiple projects and priorities in a fast-paced environment.
Demonstrated ability to work in an action-oriented decision-making environment
Strong expertise building and maintaining production software systems, with proficiency in Python and at least one additional language used in engineering tooling environments
Automotive, embedded, safety-related, calibration, or systems-engineering environments.
Large-scale migration from Make or shell-based build orchestration to Bazel.
AI-assisted developer productivity, coding agents, code intelligence, knowledge retrieval, or workflow orchestration.
Evaluation of AI-enabled engineering workflows using measurable quality, adoption, and productivity outcomes.

Key Deliverables

Assess current Make-based build, test, dependency, toolchain, and hardware workflows, then define a phased Bazel migration strategy and rollout model.
Design and implement reusable Bazel rules, macros, toolchains, platforms, configuration patterns, and repository standards for embedded software.
Migrate embedded applications, libraries, generated code, firmware, cross-compilation flows, and platform variants while ensuring build parity and reproducibility.
Integrate Bazel with enterprise CI/CD, testing, release, artifact, deployment, observability, security, and infrastructure workflows.
Optimize and operationalize the platform through caching, parallelism, reliability practices, documentation, training, legacy Make retirement, and continuous improvement.

Measures of Success

Target repositories migrated with validated build and test parity.
Reduced clean and incremental build time, CI queue time, and developer feedback time.
Increased reproducibility, approved hermetic-toolchain adoption, cache effectiveness, and CI capacity.
Lower build, pipeline, and flaky-test rates, with improved diagnosis and recovery time.
Complete artifact provenance, test evidence, and security-policy compliance for releases.
Strong developer adoption, reduced support burden, and measurable productivity improvement.

What Will Give You A Competitive Edge (Preferred Qualifications)

Master’s degree or PhD in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Machine Learning, AI, or a related field
Experience in embedded software development, automotive software, systems engineering, or safety-related toolchains
Familiarity with GM engineering tools, engineering workflows, or internal platform environments
Experience building AI assistants, coding agents, or domain-specific AI capabilities for engineers
Experience with knowledge systems, vector search, ranking, workflow orchestration, or code intelligence platforms
Experience supporting large engineering communities through reusable tools, templates, and automation
Experience evaluating AI quality in production systems using measurable outcomes such as acceptance rate, time saved, precision and recall, hallucination reduction, or workflow completion rate

GM DOES NOT PROVIDE IMMIGRATION-RELATED SPONSORSHIP FOR THIS ROLE. DO NOT APPLY FOR THIS ROLE IF YOU WILL NEED GM IMMIGRATION SPONSORSHIP NOW OR IN THE FUTURE.

Principal Software Engineering - Build System Modernization

The role

Principal Software Engineering - Build System Modernization

The role

What you will do

What you need

Key Deliverables

Measures of Success

What Will Give You A Competitive Edge (Preferred Qualifications)

Vacancy Status

AI Disclosure

Work Arrangement

Non-Discrimination and Equal Employment Opportunities

Pay and benefits

About General Motors

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