Senior Software Engineer, Rendering Infrastructure (AV Simulation)

Job Description

As a Senior Software Engineer on the Rendering Infrastructure team you will build the systems that turn a GPU-accelerated physically-based sensor simulator into a production platform one that runs reproducibly at cluster scale and against production-representative autonomous vehicle interfaces. This is a systems role at the boundary of rendering simulation perception and distributed infrastructure. You will connect the renderer to AV software stacks and compute clusters reproduce real sensor scheduling and vehicle timing run many worlds concurrently on a single GPU and make the runtime start fast and stay cheap across thousands of workers. Your work determines whether closed-loop simulation the vehicle software in the loop with the renderer not just offline synthetic data generation is trustworthy and affordable: whether a run reproduces whether synthetic sensor feeds arrive with the same timing quirks the real vehicle sees and how many scenarios we can execute per GPU-hour. We build in modern C and Python on Linux with ROS PyTorch CUDA NVIDIA OptiX NVIDIA MDL and OpenUSD. Were looking for someone who enjoys this layer debugging nondeterminism across a process boundary cutting cold-start time by changing how a runtime is packaged and reasoning about GPU memory and IPC in the same conversation.

The Rendering Infrastructure team owns the foundational systems the broader Rendering team builds on top of: asset and scene ingestion GPU memory and resource management acceleration structure construction packaging and deployment profiling infrastructure and the core engine abstractions of our physically-based sensor simulation system. We also own how the renderer connects to the AV stack and world simulator as a library or a service and how consumers configure it what it produces at what fidelity and how it behaves when something goes wrong. We sit between the rendering algorithms team and everyone who consumes simulated sensor data perception training closed-loop validation and reinforcement learning. We care about determinism throughput per GPU iteration speed and infrastructure that stays comprehensible as it scales.

Work on hard systems problems with an unusually clear definition of success reproducibility timing fidelity frames per second per GPU and worker spin-up time are all measurable and all of them matter. Own meaningful surface area: the AV stack integration and transport layer the sensor scheduling and timing model multi-world rendering on a single GPU or the runtime deployment and asset delivery path depending on your strengths. Sit at the center of the simulation stack where rendering perception and infrastructure meet and see your work used across the organization for perception training closed-loop simulation and reinforcement learning. Join a team that pairs rigor design documents reproducibility profiling and regression testing with pragmatic engineering and short feedback loops.

You will own one or more of the following areas and contribute across the others depending on your strengths and team priorities.

• Connect the renderer to AV software stacks and compute clusters designing low-latency high-bandwidth transport using ROS/ROS 2 shared-memory IPC gRPC and sockets with appropriate serialization formats and streaming multi-sensor payloads into the autonomous vehicle stack.
• Integrate the renderer with learned driving models through Gymnasium-style environment APIs stepping the simulation from Python exchanging observations and actions efficiently with PyTorch-based models and preserving deterministic execution while minimizing per-step overhead for eval and training at scale.
• Integrate the runtime with the cloud and on-premises execution environments used for large-scale closed-loop testing continuous integration and perception training pipelines.
• Improve and validate deterministic execution establishing the required bit-accurate or frame-deterministic lock-step behavior across the simulation clock dynamic physics updates and the ray-traced renderer and building the tooling that demonstrates a run reproduces to the agreed bar.
• Reproduce real sensor scheduling and vehicle timing staggered camera exposures rolling shutter behavior LiDAR spin and packet rates hardware clock drift and the onboard constraints perception actually operates under including P95/P99 compute latency transport lag and packet drops.
• Build perturbation mechanisms that inject timing jitter dropped or out-of-order frames and calibration drift in both extrinsics and intrinsics and use them to stress-test downstream perception and sensor fusion robustness in closed-loop runs.
• Build memory-efficient multi-world and multi-scenario execution inside a single rendering process using shared geometry and instancing OptiX IAS/GAS or the analogous acceleration structure hierarchies in Vulkan/DXR so concurrent rollouts share static map geometry instead of duplicating it in GPU memory.
• Optimize GPU memory footprint scene streaming and execution scheduling to maximize frames per second per GPU across concurrent simulation workers.
• Improve runtime deployment and asset delivery deterministic deployment packages (SquashFS archives read-only container layers memory-mapped storage) and low-overhead loaders for OpenUSD scene graphs and NVIDIA MDL materials that work against compressed read-only filesystems without redundant decompression or copies.
• Build distributed caches for textures precompiled OptiX/PTX shader pipelines and prebuilt acceleration structures to eliminate cold-start compilation and redundant I/O at cluster scale.
• Profile and reduce disk network and memory footprints to cut worker spin-up time binary payload size and asset ingestion overhead.
• Partner with the 3D content and USD pipeline teams to set runtime budgets automated validation rules and compression workflows before assets enter deployment.
• Uphold high standards through technical design documents code review reproducibility and performance regression testing and mentorship of other engineers.

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science Computer Engineering a related technical field or equivalent practical experience.
• 5 years of professional software engineering experience with a substantial portion focused on performance-critical systems software.
• Production proficiency in modern C (C17/20) including performance optimization memory management and clean API and system design in a large codebase plus working proficiency in Python for tooling and automation.
• Strong Linux systems programming foundation: multithreading and concurrency memory management IPC and high-throughput data movement including systems that operate across process and machine boundaries.
• Depth in at least one of the two domains this role bridges and the interest to grow into the other:
  • Robotics or autonomous systems the architecture and integration of perception planning or control components and experience with at least one interface those systems are driven through: real-time middleware (ROS/ROS 2 DDS custom IPC or high-rate publish/subscribe) and / or a Gymnasium-style environment API; or
  • GPU programming through a compute or ray tracing API (CUDA OptiX Vulkan DXR or similar) with a working understanding of GPU memory and execution models.
• A track record of designing implementing and debugging reliable distributed systems including the nondeterminism and failure modes that come with them.
• Experience profiling and optimizing real systems and the instinct to measure before optimizing.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills with the ability to work across rendering simulation perception infrastructure and content pipeline teams.

Experience in one or more of the following is helpful; we do not expect any candidate to have all of it.

• Working knowledge of how autonomous driving perception stacks ingest sensor feeds sensor scheduling staggered exposures rolling shutter LiDAR packet rates and onboard compute and transport latency budgets.
• Experience designing closed-loop simulation edge cases and perturbations: schedule jitter dropped frames out-of-order packets and calibration or extrinsics drift.
• Experience with batched rendering multi-viewport rendering or multi-scenario execution on a single GPU using acceleration structure hierarchies and instancing (OptiX IAS/GAS Vulkan/DXR TLAS/BLAS).
• Strength in both domains above rather than one GPU systems and robotics or autonomous systems or practical depth in ray tracing and path tracing specifically (NVIDIA OptiX Vulkan Ray Tracing or DirectX Raytracing).
• Hands-on Linux deployment optimization: SquashFS loop devices memory-mapped files zero-copy loading container overlay layers and cold-start reduction across compute nodes.
• Experience designing high-performance texture and shader caching systems OptiX disk cache Vulkan pipeline cache or PTX distribution.
• Experience consuming OpenUSD in a C runtime and optimizing stage traversal and runtime memory layout.
• Familiarity with deploying and scaling containerized simulation jobs on cloud platforms (AWS GCP) or on-premises HPC clusters.
• Exposure to autonomous vehicle or robotics simulation platforms such as NVIDIA Omniverse Isaac Sim DRIVE Sim Unreal Engine or custom in-house simulators.
• Experience supporting reinforcement learning environments or Gymnasium-style simulation interfaces as downstream consumers.
• Evidence of technical contribution through open-source rendering simulation or systems infrastructure work internal platforms publications or other knowledge sharing.

Relevant experience may come from robotics perception simulation rendering and graphics game engines HPC or distributed systems infrastructure. Direct autonomous vehicle experience is not required. Successful candidates will combine strong software engineering fundamentals with practical intuition for sensor data simulation timing GPU execution and distributed runtime environments.

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 New York Colorado California or Washington.

• The salary range for this role is $153200 to $234100. 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.

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.

This role can be based remotely.

*This job may be eligible for relocation benefits if you are interested in relocating to the Bay Area.

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