Staff DevOps Engineer - CI/CD, Build Automation, Edge & Robotics

Job Description

The role 

General Motors is seeking a highly skilled Senior DevOps Engineer to lead the design, implementation, and continuous improvement of modern CI/CD and build automation capabilities for software deployed across cloud, on-premises, edge, and robotic environments. 

CI/CD pipelines and build automation will be the primary focus of this role. The successful candidate will build reliable, secure, scalable, and developer-friendly delivery systems that enable teams to move software from source code to production with speed, quality, and confidence. The role also offers the opportunity to work across containers and Kubernetes, release management, edge deployment, and robotics-including the development and integration of ROS2 drivers. 

This is a hands-on technical leadership role for an experienced DevOps professional who can establish engineering standards, solve complex delivery challenges, and partner effectively with software, embedded, robotics, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and product teams. 

What you’ll do 

CI/CD and build automation - primary focus 

• Design, implement, operate, and continuously improve enterprise-grade CI/CD pipelines for application, platform, embedded, edge, and robotics software. 

• Develop reusable build, test, packaging, artifact, and deployment automation that supports multiple products, repositories, platforms, and target environments. 

• Improve pipeline reliability, performance, observability, security, and developer experience through standardization and automation. 

• Establish build and release patterns that support reproducibility, traceability, quality gates, and rapid feedback. 

• Integrate automated unit, integration, system, hardware-in-the-loop, simulation, security, performance, and regression testing into delivery workflows. 

• Define and track engineering metrics such as build health, pipeline duration, deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, and recovery time. 

• Diagnose and resolve complex failures across source control, build systems, dependencies, test infrastructure, artifacts, networks, and deployment environments. 

Containers and Kubernetes 

• Build and maintain containerized development, test, and production workflows. 

• Create secure, efficient, and maintainable container images and establish image lifecycle, scanning, signing, and promotion practices. 

• Deploy and operate workloads on Kubernetes and contribute to platform patterns for configuration, secrets, networking, scaling, resiliency, and observability. 

• Help teams adopt repeatable Kubernetes deployment approaches using infrastructure-as-code and declarative configuration. 

Release management and deployment 

• Establish release management processes for coordinated, auditable, and low-risk software releases. 

• Automate artifact promotion and deployment across development, integration, validation, production, edge, and robotic environments. 

• Support deployment strategies such as rolling, blue/green, canary, staged, and offline or intermittently connected releases where appropriate. 

• Develop mechanisms for versioning, rollback, recovery, release approval, change traceability, and fleet or site-level deployment status. 

• Partner with engineering and operations teams to improve production readiness, incident response, and post-release learning. 

Edge and robotics enablement 

• Extend DevOps practices to edge devices and constrained or distributed environments, including device provisioning, software updates, telemetry, and operational recovery. 

• Design delivery workflows that account for hardware variability, connectivity limitations, device security, and remote deployment requirements. 

• Support robotics software development and deployment pipelines, including simulation, hardware-in-the-loop testing, and field validation. 

• Contribute to the development, integration, testing, and deployment of ROS2 drivers and related robotics components when needed. 

• Collaborate with robotics engineers to package, version, validate, and release ROS2 nodes, drivers, configurations, and dependencies. 

Technical leadership and collaboration 

• Serve as a technical leader and trusted advisor for CI/CD, DevOps, release engineering, and deployment automation. 

• Define and document engineering standards, reference architectures, reusable templates, and paved paths for delivery teams. 

• Mentor engineers and raise the organization’s capabilities through design reviews, technical guidance, documentation, and knowledge sharing. 

• Collaborate across software, embedded, robotics, infrastructure, cybersecurity, quality, and product organizations to align delivery solutions with business and engineering needs. 

• Evaluate tools and technologies, make pragmatic recommendations, and lead implementation from concept through sustained operation. 

Required qualifications 

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent experience. 

• Significant professional experience in DevOps, CI/CD, build engineering, release engineering, software infrastructure, or a related discipline. 

• Demonstrated experience designing and operating production-quality CI/CD pipelines and build automation at scale. 

• Strong experience with source control, automated testing, artifact management, dependency management, and release promotion workflows. 

• Proficiency with scripting and automation languages such as Python, Bash, or PowerShell. 

• Hands-on experience with containers and container orchestration, including Docker or a comparable technology and Kubernetes. 

• Experience deploying and supporting software across multiple environments and managing complex release dependencies. 

• Strong understanding of software development lifecycle practices, branching and versioning strategies, quality gates, observability, and operational excellence. 

• Demonstrated ability to troubleshoot complex, cross-functional technical problems and drive them to resolution. 

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence technical decisions across teams. 

Preferred qualifications 

• Experience with cloud platforms and infrastructure-as-code technologies such as Terraform, Pulumi, or Ansible. 

• Experience with modern CI/CD and build tools such as GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, Azure DevOps, Bazel, CMake, or comparable technologies. 

• Experience with Kubernetes packaging and deployment tools such as Helm, Kustomize, or Argo CD. 

• Experience with software supply chain security, including SBOMs, artifact signing, provenance, vulnerability scanning, secrets management, and policy enforcement. 

• Experience deploying software to edge devices, industrial systems, vehicles, or other distributed and intermittently connected environments. 

• Experience with robotics software development, ROS2, DDS, Linux, C++, Python, or robotics simulation and hardware-in-the-loop testing. 

• Familiarity with device management, over-the-air updates, fleet operations, remote diagnostics, and edge observability. 

• Experience with release governance, change management, incident response, and reliability engineering practices. 

• Experience working in safety-critical, regulated, embedded, automotive, manufacturing, or other high-reliability environments. 

Key competencies 

• CI/CD architecture and implementation 

• Build automation and developer productivity 

• Release engineering and deployment automation 

• Containers, Kubernetes, and platform engineering 

• Edge and distributed systems delivery 

• Robotics software integration and ROS2 

• Automation, troubleshooting, and systems thinking 

• Security, quality, and operational excellence 

• Technical leadership, communication, and collaboration 

Hybrid: This role is categorized as hybrid. This means the successful candidate is expected to report to the Sunnyvale, CA office three times per week, at minimum. 

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 $189,300 to $290,700. 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: 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.

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About GM

Our vision is a world with Zero Crashes, Zero Emissions and Zero Congestion and we embrace the responsibility to lead the change that will make our world better, safer and more equitable for all.

Why Join Us 

We believe we all must make a choice every day – individually and collectively – to drive meaningful change through our words, our deeds and our culture. Every day, we want every employee to feel they belong to one General Motors team.

Benefits Overview

From day one, we're looking out for your well-being–at work and at home–so you can focus on realizing your ambitions. Learn how GM supports a rewarding career that rewards you personally by visiting Total Rewards resources.

Non-Discrimination and Equal Employment Opportunities (U.S.)

General Motors is committed to being a workplace that is not only free of unlawful discrimination, but one that genuinely fosters inclusion and belonging. We strongly believe that providing an inclusive workplace creates an environment in which our employees can thrive and develop better products for our customers.

All employment decisions are made on a non-discriminatory basis without regard to sex, race, color, national origin, citizenship status, religion, age, disability, pregnancy or maternity status, sexual orientation, gender identity, status as a veteran or protected veteran, or any other similarly protected status in accordance with federal, state and local laws. 

We encourage interested candidates to review the key responsibilities and qualifications for each role and apply for any positions that match their skills and capabilities. Applicants in the recruitment process may be required, where applicable, to successfully complete a role-related assessment(s) and/or a pre-employment screening prior to beginning employment. To learn more, visit How we Hire.

Accommodations

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