Principle Systems Engineer - Autonomy Behavior Validation

GM • Sunnyvale, CA

3d

About The Position

The Principal Autonomy Behavior Systems Engineer is the technical authority for defining, evaluating, and determining the release readiness of General Motors’ autonomous vehicle behavior. The role spans driving behaviors from routine maneuvers to rare, safety-critical events, and the full validation lifecycle from product requirements through launch and continuous fleet monitoring. The engineer applies broad expertise in autonomous driving to understand how the autonomy stack produces behavior, identify failure modes, and determine what evidence is needed before behavior is ready for deployment in a self-driving fleet.

Working across Behavior, Software, Simulation, Safety, Legal, Product, and Operations, this role builds a validation system that supports sound safety and launch decisions and earns the trust of engineers and leaders. It sets long-term validation strategy, defines readiness criteria, diagnoses complex behavior issues, designs validation approaches, and guides scalable validation tools and workflows. The role also leads technical reviews, mentors engineers, and raises systems engineering and validation standards across the AV organization.

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.
• Proven record of evaluating autonomous vehicles for a self-driving fleet, launch, supervised release, or another high-consequence product decision, including owning or materially shaping the go/no-go recommendation.
• Deep, end-to-end expertise in autonomous driving, including how perception, prediction, planning, and controls affect on-road behavior across scenarios, road users, and operating conditions.
• Deep systems engineering fundamentals, including decomposition, ODD definition, requirements strategy, V&V 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 and clearly explaining results, assumptions, and limitations to engineers and senior leaders.

Nice To Haves

• Experience as a technical lead for validating a driverless commercial launch or expansion into new operating domains.
• Experience evaluating learned or end-to-end driving systems, including characterizing their behavior, regressions, and generalization.
• Experience with human benchmarking, such as attentive-human benchmarks, and counterfactual or replay methods, and understanding how they fit within a broader validation strategy.
• Experience building or using a safety case and familiarity with hazard analysis methods such as STPA, FMEA, and 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 supporting supervised release, driverless launch, and continuous release decisions.
• Present release recommendations to senior leadership.
• Diagnose complex issues across perception, prediction, planning, and controls, and 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.
• Make trade-offs among 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 improve systems engineering and validation across the AV organization.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and 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

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal