Principle Systems Engineer - Autonomy Behavior Validation
About The Position
As a Principal Autonomy Behavior Systems Engineer, you will be the technical authority for defining, evaluating, and determining readiness for release of General Motors’ autonomous vehicle behavior. The role covers driving behaviors ranging from routine maneuvers to rare, safety-critical events, as well as the full validation lifecycle from product requirements through launch and ongoing fleet monitoring. The position requires broad, deep autonomous-driving expertise, including understanding how the autonomy stack produces behavior, where it can fail, and what evidence is needed before behavior is ready for a self-driving fleet. The engineer works across Behavior, Software, Simulation, Safety, Legal, Product, and Operations to build a validation system that supports sound safety and launch decisions and earns the confidence of the engineers and leaders who rely on it. This role sets technical strategy for behavior validation, defines readiness criteria and evidence for release decisions, diagnoses complex behavior issues, and guides the development of scalable validation tools and workflows. It also provides technical leadership through cross-functional reviews and mentorship.
Requirements
- Master's degree in systems engineering, mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, robotics, or a related field.
- At least 10 years of professional experience in autonomous vehicles, robotics, simulation, systems engineering, or safety-critical validation.
- A record of evaluating autonomous vehicles for a self-driving fleet, launch, supervised release, or another high-consequence product decision, including owning or materially shaping a go/no-go recommendation.
- Deep, end-to-end expertise in autonomous driving and how perception, prediction, planning, and controls produce on-road behavior across varied scenarios, road users, and operating conditions.
- Strong systems engineering fundamentals, including decomposition, operational design domain (ODD) definition, requirements strategy, verification and validation planning, and traceability.
- Experience leading simulation evaluation at scale.
- Strong Python and agentic workflow experience.
- Ability to design and review production-quality analysis and validation software and use code to investigate engineering questions.
- Demonstrated technical leadership across organizational boundaries, including setting direction adopted beyond a single team.
- Ability to clearly explain results, assumptions, and limitations to engineers and senior leaders.
Nice To Haves
- Experience as a technical lead validating a driverless commercial launch or expansion into new operating domains.
- Experience evaluating learned or end-to-end driving systems, including characterizing behavior, regressions, and generalization.
- Experience with human benchmarking, such as attentive-human benchmarks, and counterfactual or replay methods, and understanding of their role in a broader validation strategy.
- Experience building or using a safety case and familiarity with hazard analysis methods such as STPA, FMEA, or fault trees, and standards such as ISO 21448 (SOTIF), UL 4600, or ISO 26262.
- Experience with risk quantification and risk acceptance, and translating legal or regulatory expectations into a defensible compliance strategy.
- Experience designing validation lifecycles, scorecards, confidence rubrics, or behavior protocols used by multiple engineering teams.
Responsibilities
- Set the long-term technical strategy and systems engineering approach for autonomy behavior validation across capabilities, programs, and releases, including behavior decomposition, metrics, acceptance criteria, coverage, confidence, and traceability.
- Define readiness criteria for autonomous behavior and connect safety claims, hazard analysis, and requirements to evidence for supervised release, driverless launch, and continuous release decisions.
- Present recommendations on behavior readiness and release decisions to senior leadership.
- Serve as an organizational expert on autonomous driving behavior; diagnose complex issues across perception, prediction, planning, and controls.
- Lead efforts to close behavioral escapes and coverage gaps using fleet and incident data.
- Design validation strategies combining simulation, road data, closed-course testing, human references, and expert review, balancing coverage, confidence, fidelity, runtime, and cost.
- Guide validation tools, data pipelines, scorecards, and AI-assisted or agentic workflows toward repeatable, scalable products used by multiple teams.
- Lead cross-functional technical reviews, mentor engineers, and raise systems engineering and validation standards across the autonomous vehicle organization.
Benefits
- Incentive pay program with payouts based on company performance, job level, and individual performance.
- Medical benefits
- Dental insurance
- Vision insurance
- Health Savings Account
- Flexible Spending Accounts
- Retirement savings plan
- Sickness and accident benefits
- Life insurance
- Paid vacation
- Paid holidays
- Tuition assistance programs
- Employee assistance program
- GM vehicle discounts
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
