Staff Software Engineer, Imitation Learning - Behavior Planning, Embodied AI

Description
At General Motors, our product teams are redefining mobility. Through a human-centered design process, we create vehicles and experiences that are designed not just to be seen, but to be felt. We're turning today's impossible into tomorrow's standard -from breakthrough hardware and battery systems to intuitive design, intelligent software, and next-generation safety and entertainment features. Every day, our products move millions of people as we aim to make driving safer, smarter, and more connected, shaping the future of transportation on a global scale. Are you passionate about accelerating the future of autonomous driving? Join the Embodied AI team at General Motors. Our team is developing and deploying machine learning solutions that support safe and reliable autonomous vehicle behavior across real-world scenarios.
Join GM's Imitation Learning (IL) team within Embodied AI Behavior Planning group to build ML software and solutions for autonomous driving. In this hands-on Staff Software/ML Engineer role, you will partner with other ML engineers to develop scalable training, evaluation, and deployment solutions for learned driving policies. Your focus will be shortening the full experimentation cycle while delivering reliable, production-quality software.
What You'll Do

• Architect and build modular ML software spanning data preparation, training, evaluation, and production integration.
• Optimize end-to-end training and evaluation performance, including data loading, CPU/GPU utilization, distributed execution, and workflow orchestration.
• Enable reusable IL pretraining and rapid fine-tuning and post-training workflows, including integration with reinforcement learning (RL).
• Integrate open-loop behavioral tests, closed-loop simulation, and targeted scenarios to provide fast, actionable feedback on model quality.
• Build reusable model interfaces and data augmentation tools; maintain consistency across training, simulation, and on-vehicle inference.
• Lead cross-team technical initiatives, mentor engineers, and improve software modularity, testing, reproducibility, and reliability.

Your Skills & Abilities
Required:

• Master's or PhD degree in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Track record of leading complex software projects, setting architecture, and delivering hands-on implementation across team boundaries.
• Strong Python skills and experience building maintainable, well-tested software in large codebases.
• Hands-on experience with PyTorch or comparable frameworks and ML training or evaluation systems.
• Experience profiling and optimizing performance-sensitive ML pipelines, including data processing, CPU/GPU execution, and distributed training.
• Strong technical judgment and ability to translate research needs into reliable production software.

Preferred:

• Experience in autonomous driving, robotics, behavior planning, or trajectory prediction.
• Familiarity with imitation learning, RL, multistage training, distillation, or synthetic data generation.
• Experience with closed-loop simulation, model deployment, and training-inference consistency testing.
• Modern C++ skills or experience with GPU profiling, model compilation, and ML runtime optimization.

Remote/Hybrid: This role is categorized as fully remote or hybrid.
Compensation: The compensation information is a good faith estimate only. It is based on what a successful applicant might be paid in accordance with applicable state laws. The compensation may not be representative for positions located outside of the California Bay Area.
The salary range for this role is $189,000 to $280,000. The actual base salary a successful candidate will be offered within this range will vary based on factors relevant to the position.
Bonus Potential: An incentive pay program offers payouts based on company performance, job level, and individual performance.
Benefits:
Benefits: 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.
Company Vehicle : Upon successful completion of a motor vehicle report review, you will be eligible to participate in a company vehicle evaluation program, through which you will be assigned a General Motors vehicle to drive and evaluate. Note: program participants are required to purchase/lease a qualifying GM vehicle every four years unless one of a limited number of exceptions applies.
Relocation: This job may be eligible for relocation benefits.
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About GM
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