Senior System Performance Engineer
About the role
As a Senior System Performance Engineer on GM’s AV System Performance Team, you will design, build, and optimize reliable, high-performance software components within General Motors’ Autonomous Vehicle (AV) software stack. You will develop frameworks and tooling that enable AV engineering teams to meet real-time performance requirements across current and future compute platforms. In this role, you will drive performance-focused engineering efforts within your product area, contribute to technical direction, and elevate engineering practices through hands-on implementation and collaboration. You will also play a key role in improving how we monitor, understand, and resolve performance-critical issues across AV software systems.
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). The selected candidate will be required to travel <25% for this role. This job may be eligible for relocation benefits.
Responsibilities
- Collaborate with performance leads and partner engineering teams to align on performance requirements, development practices, and improvement opportunities.
- Lead performance-focused engineering initiatives with moderate ambiguity and cross-team collaboration.
- Contribute to the roadmap for performance tooling, frameworks, and methodologies that support efficient and scalable AV software development.
- Evaluate and prototype new tools, techniques, and technologies to improve runtime performance and developer workflows.
- Design, implement, and maintain tools and automated systems that support performance analysis, debugging, and continuous monitoring.
- Apply and help improve performance engineering standards, processes, and best practices at the team level.
- Analyze software behavior, identify performance bottlenecks, and collaborate with product teams to propose and implement optimizations.
- Mentor junior engineers on performance profiling, optimization strategies, and engineering best practices.
Requirements
- Minimum 3+ years of relevant industry experience.
- Hands-on programming experience with C++ and Python.
- Strong understanding of computer architecture and system-level software fundamentals.
- Proven experience with performance profiling, analysis, tuning, and optimization.
- Experience developing or optimizing high-performance software, ideally for heterogeneous compute environments (e.g., GPUs, DSPs, or accelerators).
- Familiarity with industry benchmarks and workloads (e.g., MLPerf).
- Strong communication skills with the ability to influence technical decisions within a team or product area.
- Ability to lead projects through ambiguity and deliver results end to end.
- BS, MS in Computer Science or a related technical field (or equivalent practical experience).
Preferred Qualifications
- Knowledge of GPU performance, OS/driver internals, or systems-level software stacks.
- Experience with AI/ML applications or inference software.
- Background with real-time operating systems.
- Experience developing or optimizing software for safety-critical systems.
Pay
The salary range for this role is $128,700 to $261,300. The actual base salary a successful candidate will be offered within this range will vary based on factors relevant to the position.
Bonus Potential: An incentive pay program offers payouts based on company performance, job level, and individual performance.
Benefits
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance.
- Health Savings Account and Flexible Spending Accounts.
- Retirement savings plan.
- Sickness and accident benefits.
- Life insurance.
- Paid vacation and holidays.
- Tuition assistance programs.
- Employee assistance program.
- GM vehicle discounts.