Staff Engineer, Developer Productivity

Description
This role is based remotely but if you live within a 50-mile radius of [Austin, Detroit, Warren, Milford, Mountain View or Sunnyvale], you are expected to report to that location three times a week, at minimum.
About Us
The AI Cloud and Developer Infrastructure organization is responsible for delivering and maintaining the tools and services engineers here at GM use every day to do their best work and drive our cars forward. Tools and services we work on enhancing the entire development process of engineers at GM - how/where code is checked out, modified, compiled, tested, merged, and eventually deployed. Our goal is to ensure our AV engineers and others here have world class tools and a seamless development experience so that they can focus on the problems that matter most in their domain.
The Role
We are looking for a Staff Engineer with an extensive engineering background, experience using a variety of developer tools and technologies, and who is passionate about developer productivity. As a leader on this team, we are looking for someone who cares deeply about the technical development of other engineers on the team and can effectively balance the needs and priorities of the business, our users, and the growth of our engineers.
This engineer will start delivering impact through observability frameworks and will evolve depending on business needs, but they will be expected to identify high ROI investments with minimal guidance.
What You'll Do (Responsibilities)

• Communicate with executive presence by presenting to leadership, initiating org-wide programs, and building/socializing complex roadmaps decomposed into workstreams, milestones, and timelines to align stakeholders and secure buy-in.
• Scale engineering culture and talent by running large trainings, coaching leads and ICs, defining interview loops, identifying gaps, creating coaching plans, and staffing workstreams appropriately.
• Secure delivery under pressure by driving collaboration, crisis response, conflict resolution, and stakeholder buy-in, while mentoring teammates to land the roadmap and managing vendor relationships when relevant.
• Model and improve culture by exemplifying company values and sharing focused feedback with managers, HRBPs, and skip-levels.
• Deliver high-quality, exclusive solutions on expedited timelines by operating autonomously and hitting deadlines.
• Set roadmaps and workstream priorities with managers by aligning scope, sequencing, and resources.
• Restore execution health by finding gaps early and partnering with managers and L8/L7 leads to adjust, pivot, and replan roadmaps and workstreams.
• Secure outcomes by driving collaboration, crisis response, conflict resolution, and stakeholder buy-in; mentor teammates to ensure delivery.
• Simplify at scale by identifying and acting on opportunities to remove complexity and redundancy.
• Advance the state of the art by prototyping high-risk ideas, tracking academia, and hitting top performance.
• Lead decisions and quality by acting as a technical authority and modeling best practices in code, testing, and docs.
• Ship breakthroughs by opening new areas, delivering key contributions, and refining requirements with stakeholders.
• Architect and execute by setting strategy and roadmaps, breaking down work, aligning stakeholders, and managing dependencies.
• Optimize systems and teams by simplifying, cutting redundancy and tech debt, improving tooling, mentoring, and representing cross-org dependencies.

Minimum Qualifications (Must-Have)

• Leadership experience: 5+ years of experience leading software or site reliability engineering (SRE) teams and balancing the tradeoff between velocity and reliability

• Bachelors Degree in Computer Science or related field or equivalent work experience

• Observability expertise: Deep understanding of core observability pillars: logs, metrics, and traces. Experience with technologies like Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, and log management systems is crucial

• Software architecture: Strong background in designing, developing, and architecting distributed systems, cloud-native applications, and microservices

• Programming proficiency: Familiarity with Go, Python, Typescript or similar along with software development practices to inform code reviews and architectural decisions

• Cloud infrastructure: Experience with modern cloud offerings like GCP, AWS, or Azure and technologies like CI/CD pipelines, Kubernetes, and Docker

• Communication skills: Excellent interpersonal and communication skills to collaborate effectively with diverse teams and stakeholders

Preferred Qualifications (Nice-to-Have)

• 7+ years of experience software engineering or site reliability engineering (SRE) teams.

• Experience working with GCP, AWS, or Azure

• Familiarity with Kubernetes, Docker, Istio, Terraform, Prometheus, Grafana, TSDBs and observability pipelines (e.g. either for logging or metrics or tracing)

• Skilled in defining and instrumenting SLIs and SLOs

• Own or contribute to Open Source projects

• Passion for self-driving technology and its potential impact on the world

Compensation: The 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 compensation may not be representative for positions located outside of New York, Colorado, California, or Washington.

• The salary range for this role: is $180,000 to $235,000. 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: GM 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.

Company Vehicle: Upon successful completion of a motor vehicle report review, you will be eligible to participate in a company vehicle evaluation program, through 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.
#GM-AV-1
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.
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
From 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.
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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