Job DescriptionService Engineering Lead, Suburban Shield (GM Defense)Work ArrangementHybrid: This role is categorized as hybrid. The successful candidate is expected to report to Warren, Michigan or Milford, Michigan three times per week, at minimum.
The RoleGM Defense (GMD) is a dynamic and growing organization within General Motors. Within GMD, the Integrated Product Support (IPS) organization is responsible for delivering aftersales and sustainment support to defense customers worldwide, ensuring customer satisfaction, mission readiness, and long-term business growth.
The Service Engineering Lead, Suburban Shield is a people leader role with end-to-end responsibility for leading the service engineering team supporting Suburban Shield vehicles and variants. This leader is accountable for building and developing a high-performing team, establishing and executing operational plans, and delivering program-level service outcomes across service readiness, field issue resolution, sustainment execution, and customer satisfaction.
This role leads a team within the IPS function with responsibility for service engineering deliverables, technical problem resolution, customer support readiness, and continuous improvement. The Service Engineering Lead serves as the primary service engineering leader for the program, ensuring the voice of the customer, field, and sustainment community is represented throughout the product lifecycle, from design and development through field deployment and in-service support.
The successful candidate will provide people leadership, technical direction, and business judgment across a diverse scope of work. They will drive cross-functional alignment with program management, product engineering, quality, supply chain, field support, and customer stakeholders while building the organization, processes, and operating rhythm required to support mission-critical defense products.
What You Will Do- Lead, coach, and develop a team of service and sustainment engineers responsible for Suburban Shield service engineering execution, field support readiness, and issue resolution.
- Establish team goals, priorities, roles, and operating mechanisms aligned to annual business objectives, program milestones, and customer commitments.
- Own talent outcomes for the team, including hiring, onboarding, performance management, development planning, succession planning, recognition, and employee engagement.
- Build the team with the right mix of technical capability, program experience, and growth potential to support current and future business needs.
- Determine resource needs, assign work across the team, remove roadblocks, and ensure high-priority deliverables are executed with urgency, quality, and accountability.
- Create and oversee operational plans for routine and non-routine service engineering activities, using data to identify risks, resolve issues, and improve execution.
- Own program-level service engineering outcomes for Suburban Shield, including:
- Service parts identification and release
- Technical manuals and service procedures
- Diagnostics, special tools, and service programming
- Field issue triage, escalation, and corrective action coordination
- Service communications and technical guidance
- Serviceability and maintainability input to product development
- Lead the team's participation in product development forums, design reviews, change control, and launch readiness activities to ensure service and sustainment requirements are incorporated early and effectively.
- Serve as the senior service engineering leader and escalation point for Suburban Shield customers and internal leadership, building trusted relationships and communicating complex issues, tradeoffs, recommendations, and recovery plans.
- Lead cross-functional resolution of complex technical, quality, reliability, and readiness issues by aligning engineering, quality, suppliers, program teams, and field support around durable corrective actions.
- Use data, field feedback, and trend analysis to identify emerging risks, quantify business and customer impact, and prioritize the team's work on the highest-value problems and opportunities.
- Drive continuous improvement in service engineering processes, field response, technical content quality, and support readiness to reduce downtime, improve customer experience, and strengthen life cycle support performance.
- Create a team environment that reflects GM behaviors by fostering inclusion, open discussion, accountability, collaboration, and safe escalation of risks or concerns.
- Provide clear communication and executive-ready updates across several job areas, tailoring messages to customers, peers, and leadership while influencing decisions through data and sound judgment.
- Support adjacent GM Defense programs and enterprise initiatives as needed where service engineering leadership, organizational capability, and Suburban Shield expertise are relevant.
Your Skills and Abilities (Required Qualifications)- Bachelors degree or equivalent experience
- 5+ years of professional experience in service engineering, sustainment engineering, field support, quality, product support, or related technical functions.
- Demonstrated people leadership experience, including direct responsibility for hiring, coaching, performance management, employee development, and team results.
- Demonstrated experience leading a team within a larger organization with accountability for operational execution, talent outcomes, and cross-functional delivery.
- Strong technical depth in service engineering, diagnostics, serviceability, maintainability, field issue resolution, or aftersales support processes.
- Demonstrated ability to create operational plans, manage competing priorities, allocate resources, and deliver results through others.
- Demonstrated experience leading through complex, ambiguous issues with multiple moving parts, using structured problem solving, sound judgment, and business acumen.
- Experience influencing senior internal and external stakeholders, including customers or partners, on technical and operational matters that require persuasion and clear communication.
- Strong analytical skills with the ability to use data and trend analysis to prioritize work, quantify impact, and support recommendations.
- Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional teams and operating forums spanning engineering, quality, suppliers, program management, and field support.
- Strong communication and stakeholder management skills, including the ability to present recommendations and results across multiple job areas.
- Ability to read and interpret engineering drawings and schematics.
- Practical diagnostic and technical troubleshooting experience.
- Ability to travel as required to support customer, field, test, and program needs.
- Candidate must be a U.S. Person (U.S. citizen, U.S. permanent resident, asylee or refugee).
- Eligible to obtain Secret U.S. Security Clearance after hire.
What Will Give You a Competitive Edge (Preferred Qualifications)- Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Automotive Technology, or a related technical field.
- Experience supporting military, government, or mission-critical vehicle programs.
- Experience leading service engineering, sustainment, or field support teams in a regulated, high-consequence, or customer-critical environment.
- Background in integrated product support, serviceability of design, reliability improvement, sustainment engineering, or field diagnostics.
- Experience serving as the senior technical or business interface for a program or customer.
- Experience building new teams, scaling processes, or standing up service support capabilities for new products or programs.
- Experience with technical publications, service documentation, diagnostic authoring, or service programming strategy.
- Experience working across suppliers, quality, engineering, and program leadership in a program-level leadership role.
- Familiarity with defense customer support models, readiness requirements, provisioning, and life cycle sustainment planning.
Why This Role MattersThis role is critical to ensuring Suburban Shield products are supportable, maintainable, and successful in the field. The Service Engineering Lead will shape both the team and the operating model required to deliver responsive, scalable, and trusted support for defense customers, while strengthening GM Defense's long-term sustainment capability.
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The position is subject to export control restrictions and requires the successful candidate to be a U.S. Person (U.S. citizen, U.S. permanent resident, asylee or refugee).
This position requires eligibility to access classified information at the Secret U.S. Security Clearance level for which the U.S. Government requires U.S. Citizenship. The successful candidate must have eligibility to access classified information at that level.
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}.The selected candidate will be required to travel
