Staff Systems Engineer– Automotive Network Communications

Job Description

The Role:

We are seeking a highly skilled and motivated Staff Systems Engineer-Automotive Network Communications to lead the definition, assessment, and continuous improvement of in‑vehicle network performance across multiple vehicle product spaces. This role is critical in establishing and managing the Network Performance Budget, Forecast, and Load Assessment for GM’s electrical architecture, ensuring that current and future feature content can be delivered reliably and at scale across Ethernet, CAN, LIN, UART, and other in‑vehicle networks.

The ideal candidate will bring deep expertise in automotive network architectures and performance analysis, strong systems thinking, and a collaborative mindset to drive data‑driven decisions and architectural trade‑offs. This role partners closely with Electrical Architecture PSEs, ECU software and hardware teams, and product/program leadership to ensure that network capacity and performance are designed, measured, and governed as a first‑class architectural concern.

What You'll Do (Responsibilities):

• Network Performance Budget & Forecast
• Define and maintain the Network Performance Budget by product area (e.g., propulsion, body, chassis, ADAS, infotainment) across vehicle programs and architectures.
• Forecast future network loading and bandwidth needs based on product roadmaps, feature growth, and architectural strategy (SDV2 & beyond).
• Network Load Assessment & Analysis
• Drive end‑to‑end network load assessment activities including message catalog reviews, traffic modeling, and simulation/measurement of bus utilization, latency, and jitter for Ethernet, CAN, LIN, and other vehicle networks.
• Establish clear criteria and thresholds for acceptable network loading and performance and communicate these to product teams.
• Network Performance Dashboarding
• Create and manage a Network Performance Dashboard that provides visibility to leadership and product teams on current and projected network performance health.
• Design Reviews & Governance
• Support Electrical Architecture Reviews (EAR) and other forums to evaluate the network implications of new features, ECUs, and topology changes, providing clear recommendations and risk assessments.
• Partner with EA PSEs to ensure adherence to Electrical Architecture Core Principles , including performance, reliability, and scalability, and provide data‑driven input to NAR/SAR and other change control processes.
• Collaboration with Software, Hardware, and Microcontroller Stakeholders
• Act as a key interface between network performance analysis, ECU software teams, hardware design teams, and microcontroller strategy teams to align on bandwidth needs, timing budgets, and implementation constraints.
• Provide a “voice of the customer” perspective for SW and microcontroller teams regarding network‑related performance and resource constraints.
• Tools, Methods, and Continuous Improvement
• Develop, standardize, and continuously improve methods and tools for network performance modeling, simulation, test, and reporting (e.g., message databases, simulation environments, data pipelines for log analysis).
• Document and share best practices, reference architectures, and lessons learned to improve consistency and scalability of network performance assessment across product areas.
• Your Skills & Abilities (Required Qualifications): Bachelor’s degree (or higher) in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, or a related technical field.
• Minimum of 7 years of engineering/technical experience, including substantial experience with in‑vehicle networks and/or automotive electrical systems.
• Proven experience performing network performance analysis (e.g., utilization, latency, jitter, margin) in complex embedded or automotive systems.
• Technical Expertise
• Strong understanding of automotive network and electrical architectures, including CAN, LIN, and Ethernet‑based communication systems (e.g., 100BASE‑T1, 1000BASE‑T1, TSN concepts).

What Will Give You A Competitive Edge ( Preferred Qualifications):

Experience defining and managing Network Performance Budgets, Load Assessments, and Forecasts for multi‑domain automotive architectures.

Background in cross‑product or platform‑level architecture development, particularly in contexts with high feature growth and multiple vehicle lines.

Familiarity with architecture performance dashboards or similar enterprise reporting tools used to monitor reliability, scalability, and performance metrics at scale.

Demonstrated ability to mentor and coach other engineers in network performance concepts, tools, and best practices.

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.