Senior Manager, Embodied AI at General Motors in Sunnyvale, CA

Job Description

We are seeking an experienced and technically strong Senior Engineering Manager – AI/ML Engineering for the Data Foundations organization of Embodied AI. This role emphasizes day‑to‑day people management, technical guidance, and effective execution. You will contribute to the future of Autonomous Vehicle (AV) development by helping drive the vision and operational excellence of the data flywheel that continuously improves GM’s Foundation AV model performance.

You will manage AI/ML Engineers, support their career growth, and guide the team’s technical direction. In this role, you will collaborate closely with partner teams across the organization, help define best practices for engineering execution, and contribute to building and sustaining a high‑impact, high‑performance team.

About the Team:

The Data Scaling group owns the Data Flywheel for AV Foundation model development and successive fine tuning. It defines the composition of the data that is needed for the AV to learn behaviors at scale and deliver the driving behaviors necessary for the product success. The team owns the definition and processes for data quality across the data loop.

The team directly works on and delivers ML models to the product that successively go up the Data Scaling curves, thereby improving AV performance through smart use of data. As part of this work, the team builds scalable systems and pipelines that attempt to 10x the data used, its diversity and impact on the models with successive major releases. The team uses existing very large datasets that GM has access to internally as well as defines the next generation of highest value datasets that GM continues to collect – both from real driving by GM internal and retail fleets but also synthetic sim-based datasets.

Why Join Us?

• Scale up AV foundation model pre-training and fine-tuning with data to its maximum capacity – into billions+ of examples - across different sources, delivering the maximum value to the model through every additional example.

• Work with cutting-edge technology and a collaborative, high-impact team of AI/ML engineers, data scientists and engineers who are passionate about leveraging advanced AI techniques to drive innovation for L2, L3 and L4 applications.

• Contribute to the safety, reliability, and scalability of next-generation autonomous vehicles.

What You'll Do:

• Manage a team of AI/ML engineers building and scaling the Data Flywheel at GM.

• Raise the engineering bar of the team: set best practices, give feedback, and provide mentorship to direct reports.

• Drive the technical vision for aspects of Data Foundations at GM, working with senior leaders and members of your team.

• Define the project roadmap, set development priorities, and align the team’s work with company objectives and product milestones.

• Collaborate cross-functionally with teams involved in AV model development and validation and ensure we meet organizational goals, product requirements and scaling needs.

• Promote a collaborative, inclusive, and high-performance team culture, and champion the GM engineering values and principles.

What You Must Have:

• BS, MS, or PhD in Robotics, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.

• Proven experience managing and scaling high-performing engineering teams with a focus on operational excellence.

• Demonstrated ability to inspire and motivate teams, drive best practices, and deliver continuous improvement.

• Track record delivering scalable software solutions to a production environment using Python.

• Proven experience in solving data scaling challenges, ranging from data diversity, data quality and building best practices to incorporate multiple data sources in large models.

• Excellent communication, collaboration, and mentoring abilities, with a passion for driving innovation in autonomous technology.

• Strong organizational, communication, and people leadership skills.

Bonus Points

• A background in Robotics or the AV/ADAS industry.

• Direct experience leveraging LLMs/VLMs/etc. for production workflows.

• Experience in building and scaling large model training pipelines that are performant and enable quick iteration by distributed teams.

• Strong data processing skills using tools like Numpy, Pandas, and Apache Spark.

• Experience developing or working with safety-critical code and systems

• Experience deploying foundation models into production environments and understanding the end-to-end process.

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 $296,300-$453,900. 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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Why Join Us

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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.

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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.

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