Software Engineer, AV Launch – Early Career

About the Team 

The AV Launch team builds the software foundation that brings GM’s autonomous driving capabilities to life on the vehicle. We configure, deploy, launch, and monitor the applications that make up the autonomy stack, developing onboard services that orchestrate vehicle activities from startup through shutdown. 

We are part of GM’s Autonomous Vehicle Platform Core team, delivering the core software frameworks that enable other teams and major vehicle systems. We own critical platform capabilities that include software deployment, application configuration and lifecycle management, vehicle power and software modes, and observability systems. 

Our systems span embedded vehicle platforms, manufacturing lines, developer infrastructure, cloud services, and simulation. We support internal data collection fleets and production vehicles, and partner closely with platform teams and autonomy developers to solve complex problems. 

About the Role 

As an early career Software Engineer on the AV Launch team, you will design, implement, test, and operate the services that reliably manage autonomous driving software on GM vehicles. You will work across the software lifecycle: from understanding requirements and defining platform behavior to building production-quality services, integrating with vehicle hardware, validating behavior on benches and vehicles, and diagnosing issues in real-world environments. 

This role is designed for a recent graduate or engineer early in their career who wants to build depth in embedded systems, distributed software, vehicle platforms, and autonomous driving technology. You will learn from experienced engineers while contributing meaningful code to systems that must be dependable, observable, and maintainable. 

You will develop a systems-level perspective as you learn how individual services, devices, and vehicle states interact. Over time, you will turn that understanding into clear abstractions and design guidance that inform how other developers build vehicle software. 

  What You’ll Do   

• Build on-vehicle services that provision, launch, and monitor autonomous vehicle software in development and production workflows. 

• Build frameworks to configure autonomy software for a wide variety of hardware platforms, simulation environments, and use cases. 

• Develop systems and frameworks to monitor vehicle status and reliability. 

• Work alongside experienced engineers to ramp up on AV software, embedded systems, and the production engineering practices required to support autonomous driving at scale. 

• Grow through progressively more complex assignments spanning design, implementation, integration, and testing. 

Required Qualifications

• Recently completed a bachelor’s, master’s, or PhD degree in a STEM field. For completed degrees, graduation must have occurred within the past 9 months. 

• Strong background in C++ and Python development, demonstrated through coursework, internships, research, or substantial projects. 

• Experience developing in a Linux environment. 

• Strong grasp of software fundamentals including data structures, algorithms, operating systems, concurrency, and computer architecture. 

• Ability to debug complex software problems, reason about system behavior, and communicate clearly in a collaborative team environment. 

• Interest in autonomous vehicles, robotics, embedded systems, or high-performance software. 

Preferred Qualifications 

• Familiarity with robotics middleware platforms and related concepts, such as inter-process communication or logging. 

• Prior internship, research, or project experience in autonomous driving, robotics, embedded systems, AI/ML infrastructure, or platform software. 
• Graduation between December 2025 and August 2026, with availability to begin employment in 2026.

• This role is categorized as hybrid . This means the selected candidate is expected to report to our Sunnyvale, CA office location at least 3 times a week.
• This job may be eligible for relocation benefits

• The salary range for this role  :  is $119,250 to $153,900. 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.