Principal Security Software Engineer, PKI and Secrets Management

General Motors

12d•$201,600 - $309,900•Remote

About The Position

The Principal Security Software Engineer defines and leads cybersecurity strategy for new technology, highly complex features, and significant improvements to existing or major programs. The role provides technical leadership to execution teams for development and integration, tracks emerging security technologies and competitive products, and helps define GM’s direction. It supports common cybersecurity best practices, participates in hiring activities including technical questionnaire development, resume reviews, and interviews, and contributes to projects eligible for patent applications. The engineer designs, builds, and maintains security software components, services, and tools across GM’s application ecosystem. The role develops automation frameworks and internal platforms that help product teams adopt secure patterns; integrates security checks into CI/CD and cloud-native workflows; and architects resilient security services and APIs. It collaborates with application, infrastructure, and platform teams, performs code and design reviews and threat modeling, builds security telemetry systems, and contributes engineering ownership to incident response and post-incident reviews. The role also translates emerging security developments into engineering requirements and roadmaps and mentors other engineers in secure coding, design, and architecture. This position is categorized as remote. The selected candidate may be based anywhere in the country of work and is not expected to report to a GM worksite unless directed by their manager. Relocation benefits are available to candidates who qualify under company policy. GM does not provide immigration-related sponsorship for this role. The stated salary range is $201,600–$309,900, with incentive pay potential based on company performance, job level, and individual performance.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Cybersecurity, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
At least 7 years of experience as a software engineer building and owning production systems or in-house applications.
Advanced proficiency in at least one modern programming language, such as Python, Go, Java, or C++, and strong understanding of software engineering fundamentals including data structures, algorithms, and design patterns.
Experience using AI-assisted development tools such as GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or similar in day-to-day engineering workflows.
Experience designing, implementing, and operating services on AWS, Azure, or GCP, including managed services and infrastructure as code.
Hands-on experience with containerization and orchestration technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.
Understanding of PKI, including certificate issuance and management.
Understanding of encryption in transit and at rest, and key and secrets management.
Understanding of secure coding practices, input validation, and common vulnerability classes such as injection, XSS, CSRF, and insecure direct object references.
Experience partnering with security and audit/compliance teams and translating security requirements into engineering work.
Ability to plan and manage work in an Agile environment and own features and services from design through production.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain identity and security concepts to technical and non-technical audiences.

Nice To Haves

Extensive experience designing and operating PKI and cryptographic services at enterprise scale.
Experience modernizing and automating security platforms for broad adoption across engineering teams.
Proven technical leadership, setting direction and influencing across organizations.
Strategic thinking and championing change while balancing security with business needs.
Strong integrity, accountability, and communication skills.

Responsibilities

Define and lead cybersecurity strategy for new technology, highly complex features, and significant improvements to existing or major programs.
Provide technical leadership to execution teams for development and integration.
Stay abreast of new security technology and competitive products and help define GM direction.
Provide, communicate, and support common best practices among the cybersecurity community.
Participate in hiring, including developing technical questionnaires, reviewing resumes, and conducting interviews.
Participate in projects eligible for patent application.
Design, build, and maintain security-focused software components, services, and tools across GM’s application ecosystem.
Develop automation frameworks and internal platforms that help product teams adopt secure patterns for identity, authorization, secrets management, and logging.
Integrate security controls and checks into CI/CD pipelines, build systems, and cloud-native deployment workflows.
Architect and implement resilient, scalable security services and APIs, including authentication, authorization, policy evaluation, and event ingestion.
Collaborate with application, infrastructure, and platform engineering teams to embed security requirements into system and service designs.
Perform secure code reviews, threat modeling, and design reviews to identify and remediate vulnerabilities early in the SDLC.
Build and maintain security telemetry systems for logging, metrics, and alerting that support detection, triage, and incident response.
Contribute to incident response and post-incident reviews as an engineering owner for security services and tooling.
Track emerging security threats, vulnerabilities, and technologies and translate them into engineering requirements, patterns, and roadmaps.
Mentor software engineers on secure coding, design patterns, and security architecture.

Benefits

Medical benefits
Dental benefits
Vision benefits
Health Savings Account
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
Incentive pay program with payouts based on company performance, job level, and individual performance
Relocation benefits for candidates who qualify under company policy