Senior System Performance Engineer

General Motors

Senior System Performance Engineer responsible for performance-focused initiatives within GM's Autonomous Vehicle software stack. Designing and optimizing high-performance software components while collaborating with engineering teams.

Posted 4/30/2026full-timeSunnyvale • California, Texas, Washington • 🇺🇸 United StatesSenior💰 $128,700 - $261,300 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

Python

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

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

What you’ll need

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).

Benefits

Comp & perks

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.

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

C++Pythonperformance profilingperformance analysisperformance tuningperformance optimizationhigh-performance software developmentcomputer architecturesystem-level software fundamentalsautomated systems

Soft Skills

strong communication skillsinfluence technical decisionslead projects through ambiguitycollaborationmentoring

Certifications

BS in Computer ScienceMS in Computer Science