General Motors

Senior Backend Software Engineer/SRE - GM Energy

General Motors$129K — $198K *
Energy & Utilities
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electrical/Computer Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
  • 8+ years in software engineering, DevOps, or SRE roles, with production-level backend/platform services experience.
  • Hands-on expertise with major cloud providers like Azure, GCP, or AWS.
  • Strong programming skills in languages such as Python, C#, Java, or Go.
  • Experience with observability and monitoring tools like Datadog, Prometheus, or Grafana.
  • Familiarity with CI/CD practices and tools, including automated testing and deployment strategies.
  • Proven experience in incident response and post-incident improvement.

Responsibilities

  • Own and enhance reliability for critical Energy Cloud services.
  • Define and maintain SLIs/SLOs that align with customer and business needs.
  • Lead improvements to production observability using metrics, logs, and alerts.
  • Implement Production Readiness Reviews to ensure reliability before service launch.
  • Drive incident management activities including response and root-cause analysis.
  • Design robust backend services and automation for system reliability and performance.
  • Partner with engineering teams to ensure data handling meets reliability and monitoring standards.

Benefits

  • Hybrid work environment with a minimum onsite requirement.
  • Potential eligibility for relocation benefits.
  • Opportunity for professional mentorship and growth.
  • Work on impactful energy and IoT projects.
  • Collaborative and cross-functional team culture.
Full Job Description
Job Description

The Role

The Energy Cloud Platform is a highly scalable, secure cloud platform in production today that connects vehicles, utilities, markets, and IoT systems to enable smart charging, bidirectional energy (V2H/V2G), and data-driven energy services. As part of the Cloud Platform & Smart Charging team, you will help ensure our services remain reliable, observable, and ready to support mission-critical energy programs at scale.

We are looking for a Senior Backend Software Engineer - Site Reliability (SRE) to lead reliability, performance, and operational excellence for the Energy Cloud platform, while also contributing directly to backend services and platform capabilities. In this role, you will combine strong backend software engineering skills with SRE practices to:
  • Design and evolve production-ready, observable services
  • Build and improve CI/CD, infrastructure, and automation
  • Lead incident response, post-incident reviews, and reliability improvements
  • Partner closely with product engineering, data, and cloud platform teams


This is a senior individual contributor role: you will drive cross-team initiatives, set reliability patterns others adopt, and mentor engineers across the organization. You will also spend meaningful time on backend feature and platform development, and the role is well-suited for someone who wants to deepen both SRE and software engineering skills.

What You'll Do:

Reliability & Operations
  • Own and improve reliability for key Energy Cloud services that power electric grid programs, V2H/V2G pilots, and enrollment/operations experiences.
  • Define and maintain SLOs/SLIs (latency, error rate, availability) and partner with engineering and product to ensure they reflect real customer and business needs.
  • Lead rollout and continuous improvement of production observability (e.g., Datadog or similar): metrics, logs, traces, dashboards, and alerting across services.
  • Implement and enforce Production Readiness Reviews (PRR) and reliability scorecards so that every new service, integration, and major feature meets our reliability bar before going live.
  • Drive incident management: participate in and often lead on-call/incident response, perform root-cause analysis, and ensure post-incident actions are prioritized and completed.

Software Engineering & Automation
  • Design and implement robust, well-tested backend services and automation to improve system reliability, performance, and data integrity (e.g., telemetry ingestion pipelines, charging session data flows, enrollment workflows).
  • Build and evolve CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitHub Actions) to support blue/green or similar deployment strategies, automated rollbacks, and high-confidence releases.
  • Design and validate disaster recovery and continuity patterns (backups, cross-region failover, runbooks, simulation drills) for critical platform components.
  • Partner with data engineering and platform teams to ensure data ingestion, storage, and processing patterns support reliability, scalability, and monitoring requirements.

Cross-Team Leadership
  • Lead cross-team reliability initiatives that improve how multiple Energy Cloud and related services are built, deployed, and operated.
  • Define and socialize standard patterns for observability, CI/CD, performance testing, and data quality that other teams can adopt.
  • Create clear technical documentation: runbooks, design docs, PRR checklists, SLO definitions, and reliability playbooks that make complex systems operable by others.
  • Mentor engineers (SWE, DevOps, SRE, data) on reliability best practices, debugging techniques, and operational excellence.


Your Skills & Abilities (Required Qualifications):
  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electrical/Computer Engineering or related field, or equivalent practical experience.
  • 8+ years of experience in software engineering, DevOps, or SRE roles, including:
    • Designing, building, and operating backend or platform services in production.
    • Hands-on experience with at least one major cloud provider (Azure, GCP, or AWS).
  • Strong programming skills in one or more languages (e.g., Python, C#, Java, Go) and experience writing production-grade services and automation.
  • Demonstrated experience with observability and monitoring (e.g., Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry) and implementing meaningful metrics and alerts.
  • Experience with CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, Jenkins) including automated testing, deployment strategies, and rollback patterns.
  • Proven track record owning or co-owning on-call, incident response, and post-incident improvement work for production systems.
  • Ability to lead cross-functional technical efforts, influence without direct authority, and communicate clearly with engineering, product, and operations stakeholders.


What Will Give You A Competitive Edge (Preferred Qualifications):
  • Experience in energy, utilities, EV charging, or large-scale IoT platforms.
  • Experience with data platforms (e.g., Snowflake, Databricks, or similar) and designing reliable data ingestion and processing pipelines.
  • Deep familiarity with SRE principles: error budgets, capacity planning, resilience testing, chaos engineering, and production game days.
  • Experience designing disaster recovery strategies and running DR drills in collaboration with product and infrastructure teams.
  • Experience implementing security and compliance practices (e.g., secrets management, vulnerability remediation, secure pipelines) in partnership with security and cloud platform teams.
  • Demonstrated success mentoring other engineers and raising the bar for reliability and operational excellence across multiple teams.


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 actual base salary a successful candidate will be offered within this range will vary based on factors relevant to the position, as well as geography of the selected candidate.
• The salary range for this role is $129,400 - $198,400. 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.

#LI-SB3
GM does not provide immigration-related sponsorship for this role. Do not apply for this role if you will need GM immigration sponsorship now or in the future. This includes direct company sponsorship, entry of GM as the immigration employer of record on a government form, and any work authorization requiring a written submission or other immigration support from the company (e.g., H1-B, OPT, STEM OPT, CPT, TN, J-1, etc).This role is categorized as hybrid. This means the selected candidate is expected to report to a specific location at least 3 times a week {or other frequency dictated by their manager}.This job may be eligible for relocation benefits.

About General Motors

General Motors Company engages in the manufacture and sale of cars and trucks in the United States, China, Brazil, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Italy. It offers sedans, crossovers, sport utility vehicles, pick-up trucks, coupes, sports/convertibles and hybrid vehicles, hatchbacks/wagons, and vans, as well as mini cars in India. The company also provides parts and accessories, such as iPod and MP3 compatibility, mobility accessories, performance parts, AC parts and services, and merchandise. In addition, it offers vehicle safety, security, and information services. The company provides used vehicles. It offers its products through dealers and distributors. General Motors Company was formerly known as NGMCO, Inc. and changed its name to General Motors Company in July 2009. The company was incorporated in 2009 and is based in Detroit, Michigan. It operates manufacturing facilities in India, the United States, and Canada. General Motors Company operates as a subsidiary of the United States Department of The Treasury. General Motors led global vehicle sales for 77 consecutive years from 1931 through 2007, longer than any other automaker, and is currently among the world's largest automakers by vehicle unit sales. General Motors acts in most countries outside the USA via wholly-owned subsidiaries but operates in China through 10 joint ventures. GM's OnStar subsidiary provides vehicle safety, security, and information services. In 2009, General Motors shed several brands, closing Saturn, Pontiac, and Hummer, and emerged from a government-backed Chapter 11 reorganization. In 2010, GM made an initial public offering IPOs to date and returned to profitability later that year.

General Motors Careers

Join the dynamic team at General Motors, a global leader in automotive innovation and technology. At General Motors, we offer unparalleled job opportunities that propel your career forward while contributing to a legacy of engineering excellence.

Work You’ll Do

Embark on a career with General Motors to drive the future of mobility. Our team is dedicated to redefining the automotive landscape through innovation and leadership in electric vehicles and sustainable solutions. By joining us, you will be part of a culture that values diversity, teamwork, and continuous professional growth.

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General Motors is not just a company; it's a community where you can grow your skills alongside the best in the industry. Our leadership is committed to providing every employee—from interns to senior professionals—with opportunities for career advancement, leadership development, and diversity training.

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At General Motors, innovation is at the core of everything we do. From research and development to manufacturing, our teams work collaboratively to lead the industry with cutting-edge technologies and sustainable practices. We encourage our employees to think big and push the boundaries of what’s possible.

Join Our Global Team

As part of our global workforce, you will collaborate with talented individuals who are passionate about shaping the future of transportation. General Motors offers a variety of career paths in engineering, design, IT, marketing, and more. With over 155,000 employees worldwide, our network provides expansive opportunities for networking and professional development.

Internship Programs and Employment Benefits

Start your career journey with a General Motors internship, where you can apply your academic knowledge to real-world projects. Our internships provide a robust foundation in the automotive industry, with mentorship from experienced leaders. Full-time employees enjoy a wealth of benefits, including comprehensive health care, retirement plans, and performance bonuses, ensuring that your hard work is rewarded.

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Learn more about General Motors
Size
157,000 employees
Market Cap
$46.9 billion
Industry
Net Income
$6.4 billion
Founded
1908
5 Year Trend
-3.2%
Revenue
$122.4 billion
NASDAQ

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