Principle Software Engineering – Continuous Integration & Quality Gating
General Motors
Vacancy Status:
No: This posting is not for an existing vacancy within the organization and is open to new applications. (New Head Count)
AI Disclosure:
As part of the application process, Artificial Intelligence will be used in the hiring process for this role
Hybrid -
This role is categorized as hybrid. This means the successful candidate is expected to report to Markham, ON three times per week, at minimum.
Specific job responsibilities include:
The architect will:
- Establish the end-to-end CI/CD reference architecture for Platform Software delivery across component, pillar, system-of-systems, and release-train flows.
- Define how independently delivered software components are built, versioned, validated, combined, promoted, and consumed by downstream teams and release processes.
- Create a coherent quality-gating strategy that protects the core mainline and prevents known-bad software, invalid configurations, incompatible artifacts, and insufficient test evidence from advancing.
- Connect developer workflows, GitHub Enterprise, cloud build infrastructure, artifact repositories, virtual and physical test environments, dashboards, and release systems into a traceable delivery path.
- Advise senior engineering and program leadership on release risk, pipeline health, quality signal confidence, architectural tradeoffs, and investment priorities.
- Lead cross-functional technical decisions when ownership spans multiple teams, organizations, suppliers, or software domains.
Key Deliverables
End-to-end delivery architecture
- Architect the target-state flow for all software and non-code inputs required to produce a VeSCoM release, including embedded binaries, containers, MCU and SoC images, calibration, configuration, network and interface artifacts, and test assets.
- Define clear entry and exit criteria for each stage of the delivery pipeline, from pull request and component build through integrated build, validation, release candidate, and VeSCoM publication.
- Establish the relationship between pillar-level CI/CD pipelines and the system- level integration pipeline, including dependency management, build composition, artifact promotion, and last-known-good baselines.
- Define build-once, promote-many practices using immutable, traceablevartifacts and reproducible configurations wherever practical.
- Design the pipeline to support multiple delivery cadences and release trains without allowing local team velocity to compromise system-level quality.
- Identify manual handoffs, duplicated builds, late integration points, ambiguous ownership, and other sources of delivery delay or quality escape; replace them with standardized, automated controls.
Quality gates and mainline protection
- Define a tiered quality-gating model that applies the right test depth and quality evidence at the right point in the software flow.
- Establish blocking gates for pull requests, component integration, cross- component compatibility, system integration, release-candidate readiness, and VeSCoM promotion.
- Ensure gates fail fast and provide actionable diagnostics, clear ownership, and a defined path to resolution or formally governed exception handling.
- Develop policies for rejecting failing changes, preventing direct or unsafe mainline integration, re-queuing changes against the latest integrated state, and preserving a known-good baseline.
- Define objective criteria for distinguishing product failures from infrastructure, environment, test-quality, and data-quality failures so that the pipeline does not produce misleading signals.
- Establish guardrails for flaky tests, quarantined tests, waived results, incomplete execution, invalid manifests, missing artifacts, and test environments that are not representative of the target vehicle system.
- Partner with BiQS, embedded software product teams, validation organizations, and the CI/CD platform team to translate quality principles into executable, measurable pipeline policy.
Embedded and vehicle-system integration
- Evaluate how software components interact across ECUs, MCUs, SoCs, containers, vehicle services, communication networks, diagnostics, calibration, and configuration management.
- Define integration checks for interface compatibility, version alignment, dependencies, resource budgets, boot and deployment behavior, communication health, and system configuration integrity.
- Ensure the pipeline validates the interactions that matter at vehicle level—not only whether individual components compile or pass isolated tests.
- Incorporate appropriate levels of unit, static, component, integration, simulation, CoSIM, SIL, HIL, bench, and system validation into the delivery strategy.
- Establish the conditions under which test results are considered valid, including the required software baseline, model or vECU version, test manifest, hardware configuration, and environment health.
- Drive earlier detection of cross-subsystem defects and compatibility issues before they reach late-stage vehicle integration or customer release activity.
GitHub Enterprise and cloud CI/CD
- Define and govern GitHub Enterprise workflow patterns, repository protections, pull-request checks, branch policies, reusable workflows, runners, permissions, and release controls.
- Architect scalable GitHub Actions workflows that support embedded build systems, large artifacts, multi-repository dependencies, self-hosted or VNET- integrated runners, and cloud-hosted build infrastructure.
- Establish standards for workflow-as-code, reusable actions, version pinning, secrets and identity management, build isolation, caching, concurrency, retries, cancellation, and auditability.
- Define an enterprise-ready migration and convergence strategy for legacy CI/CD implementations while preserving delivery continuity and improving reliability.
- Partner with cloud, platform, cybersecurity, developer experience, and artifact- management teams to ensure the pipeline is secure, resilient, observable, cost- aware, and supportable.
- Create technical standards that make the preferred path the easiest path for component teams and suppliers.
Measurement, observability, and continuous improvement
- Define the metrics needed to measure pipeline health, including build and test success, gate escape rate, false-failure rate, flakiness, feedback time, queue time, end-to-end delivery time, rework, change failure rate, and release readiness.
- Establish dashboards and data models that show the health of each gate, component, pipeline, environment, and release candidate.
- Use data to identify systemic failure patterns and prioritize the highest-value improvements in pipeline reliability, test effectiveness, developer experience, and release confidence.
- Set reliability expectations and service-level objectives for critical CI/CD and quality-gating capabilities.
- Lead root-cause analysis and corrective action for recurring pipeline and integration failures; ensure lessons learned become durable architecture, standards, or automation.
- Demonstrate measurable improvement in feedback speed, mainline stability, integration predictability, and the percentage of release content produced without manual patching.
Technical leadership and influence
- Serve as the recognized technical authority for software defined vehicle CI/CD and quality-gating architecture.
- Lead architecture reviews, design decisions, technical working sessions, and cross-functional alignment across engineering, quality, validation, DevOps, program management, and suppliers.
- Convert ambiguous program needs into clear architectural principles, roadmaps, standards, and executable priorities.
- Influence without relying on direct authority; establish accountability while maintaining productive relationships with component and platform teams.
- Coach senior engineers and technical leaders on pipeline architecture, built-in quality, test allocation, release evidence, and sustainable engineering practices.
- Communicate complex technical risks and tradeoffs clearly to both engineering audiences and executive leadership.
Qualifications/Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, electrical engineering, computer engineering, software engineering, systems engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience. Advanced degree preferred.
- 15 years of experience in software development & deployment
- Experience with MCU and
Reference: WJ-5769_17268