Principal Software Engineer, Engineering Effectiveness

Description
The Role:
General Motors is seeking a highly skilled and experienced professional to join our team as a Principal Software Engineer, Engineering Effectiveness .
This role is focused on solving some of the most difficult and high-leverage engineering problems across the software development process. The person in this role will identify areas where human workflows, compute workflows, and engineering systems are operating far below their potential, then design and implement technical solutions that materially improve speed, cost, correctness, and usability.
The ideal candidate is highly autonomous, deeply technical, and energized by problems that appear difficult, inefficient, or intractable. They should be comfortable moving between code, systems, data, workflows, and organizational habits to find the real source of inefficiency and unlock outsized improvements. This role will drive change through hands-on implementation, technical leadership, and close collaboration with partner teams.
What You'll Do:

• Identify and solve high-complexity engineering problems with the potential for outsized improvements in speed, efficiency, cost, or developer effectiveness

• Build and apply technical solutions that optimize compute-heavy and workflow-heavy parts of the software-development process

• Analyze systems and behavioral patterns across teams and codebases to find root causes of waste, friction, duplication, or poor performance

• Implement scalable improvements that can be applied broadly rather than solving the same problem repeatedly in isolated ways

• Partner with teams to improve both technical systems and the engineering practices that surround them

• Teach and enable engineers so that better patterns are understood, adopted, and sustained over time

Your Skills and Abilities (Required Qualifications):

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience

• Demonstrated ability to solve unusually difficult technical problems with limited oversight and high ambiguity

• Strong track record of delivering high-leverage technical improvements across software, automation, platforms, or engineering workflows

• Excellent systems thinking and analytical skills, with the ability to find non-obvious sources of inefficiency and address root causes at scale

• Deep hands-on engineering capability, including the ability to move from investigation to implementation in complex environments

• Passion for correctness, usability, efficiency, and creating systems that make good engineering outcomes easier to achieve

What Can Give You a Competitive Advantage (Preferred Qualifications)

• Experience optimizing large-scale build, test, CI/CD, release, or other compute-intensive engineering workflows

• Experience identifying broad technical patterns across a large codebase and translating those findings into durable improvements

• Experience designing or building internal platforms, workflow tooling, dashboards, or self-service engineering systems

• Experience improving adoption of better engineering practices across multiple teams through technical leadership and education

• Strong instincts for finding high-leverage opportunities where a different technical approach can unlock disproportionate gains

This 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}.
This job is not eligible for relocation benefits. Any relocation costs would be the responsibility of the selected candidate.
About GM
Our 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.
Why Join Us
We 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.
Total Rewards | Benefits Overview
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Non-Discrimination and Equal Employment Opportunities (U.S.)
General 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.
All 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.
We 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.
Accommodations
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