Staff Hardware Engineer - ECU Requirements & Specifications

Description

About the Team

Compute & Connectivity Hardware (CCH) is part of GM’s Software & Services organization and owns the hardware foundation for GM’s software-defined vehicles. The team develops and integrates the compute, connectivity, networking, and electronic platforms that support vehicle intelligence, infotainment, ADAS, mechatronic controls, connected services, and over-the-air experiences.

CCH work spans architecture, requirements, hardware design, embedded systems, cybersecurity, functional safety, integration, validation, launch, and field performance. Our engineers collaborate across software, systems, controls, vehicle engineering, suppliers, and manufacturing to solve complex technical problems and deliver reliable, production-ready hardware across GM’s vehicle portfolio.

The Opportunity

Electronic Control Units (ECUs) are central to GM’s Software Defined Vehicle and electrified-vehicle architectures. The ECU Hardware Requirements & Specifications team is seeking a highly experienced Staff Hardware Engineer to provide technical leadership for the development, management, and continuous improvement of hardware requirements, low-level software definitions, and Component Technical Requirements Specifications (CTRS) across GM’s vehicle portfolio.

This role is for a recognized technical leader who can operate across hardware, software, vehicle, electrical architecture, diagnostics, safety, sourcing, manufacturing, and external engineering organizations. The Staff Engineer will shape technical direction, establish common solutions, resolve complex system interactions, and influence decisions across the portfolio without direct people-management responsibility.

The ideal candidate combines deep knowledge of automotive embedded control systems with strong requirements-engineering discipline, systems thinking, business judgment, and the ability to translate complex technical issues into clear decisions and executable outcomes. They will help advance common, traceable, high-quality ECU requirements and support the continued modernization of GM’s requirements-management practices, including DOORS Next-Gen, automation, and leveraging AI to improve requirement quality.

The Role

As a level-8 Staff Engineer, you will serve as a technical authority for ECU hardware requirements and specifications. You will lead complex technical projects, establish alignment across dependent engineering organizations, mentor engineers, and drive decisions through influence, technical rigor, and clear communication.

You will support build-to-spec and build-to-print ECU designs across GM’s diverse vehicle and electrical architectures, including electrification and Electric Vehicle applications. Your work will enable standardized hardware designs, component commonization, requirements reuse, seamless software implementation, and effective downstream verification and validation. You will actively use AI tools to enhance and improve our requirement development process.

What You’ll Do

Lead the development, maintenance, and configuration management of ECU hardware electrical and functional interface requirements, including interactions with vehicle electronic and mechatronic devices and low-level software.

Establish technical direction for embedded-controller requirements across vehicle, electrical/controller architecture, infrastructure software, low-level software, diagnostics, hardware design, safety, and product design release stakeholders.

Drive standardization of Input/Output interfaces and promote commonization and reuse of components across ECU hardware designs and the CTRS portfolio.

Lead requirements reviews, design-flow execution, change-control activities, and technical approval discussions to achieve rigor, alignment, timely decisions, and high-quality execution.

Provide technical leadership for CTRS compilation and build activities supporting product-team sourcing, build-to-print implementation, and post-sourcing design changes.

Establish and improve traceability between internal and external CTRS requirements and downstream verification and validation activities.

Identify requirements and design gaps across GM and external engineering implementations, and drive ECU, sub-component, and circuit-level corrective actions when designs do not adhere to common requirements.

Lead or support the migration, deployment, and continuous improvement of ECU hardware requirements in DOORS Next-Gen and other structured requirements-management environments.

Support requirements and specifications for ECU manufacturing, remanufacturing, and plant/service programming implementations.

Apply systems thinking to complex interactions among ECU hardware, low-level software, diagnostics, communications, mechatronics, vehicle systems, and electrical architectures.

Provide technical leadership for semiconductor and microprocessor functional-safety activities, including requirements aligned to safety-manual use cases and safety-critical embedded-control applications.

Contribute to ECU circuit-level requirements and safety-related activities, including the interpretation of failure modes and the integration of safety considerations into technical requirements.

Champion continuous improvement through new technologies, automation, artificial intelligence, competitive benchmarking, and improved requirements-documentation methods.

Lead cross-functional technical forums and complex projects, resolve ambiguity, mediate competing stakeholder needs, and communicate recommendations to technical and leadership audiences.

Mentor engineers and promote technical excellence, accountability, innovation, and disciplined execution across diverse and global teams.

Required Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Physics, Computer Science, or a related engineering discipline.

At least 7 years of engineering experience in product development, technical requirements, specifications, embedded controls, or a related technical discipline.

Demonstrated leadership of complex technical programs or initiatives, including the ability to influence outcomes without direct authority.

Good knowledge and practical experience with structured requirements-management tools such as DOORS, DOORS Next-Gen, Jama, or Polarion.

Ability to manage complex requirements across multiple CTRS use cases while maintaining commonality, reuse, alignment, configuration control, and traceability across a portfolio.

Strong competency in writing, interpreting, and reviewing ECU hardware technical requirements, with the ability to translate complex technical content into clear decisions and actionable outcomes.

Strong oral communication, teamwork, and cross-functional collaboration skills, with the ability to clearly present technical requirements and align stakeholders.

Strong understanding of automotive embedded control systems, including ECU hardware, low-level software interfaces, diagnostics, failure modes, and electrical or mechatronic architectures.

Knowledge of microcontrollers, memory technologies, and vehicle serial communications such as Ethernet, CAN, LIN, SENT, and SERDES.

Knowledge of semiconductor physics, structures, fundamentals, models, and failure mechanisms.

Knowledge of GM product-development cycles, automotive product-release processes, and technical specification practices.

Strong oral and written communication skills, with the ability to translate complex technical content into clear decisions and actions.

Results-driven, proactive approach to solving problems involving complex system interactions.

Ability to provide technical leadership, collaboration, and mentorship across diverse engineering teams.

Demonstrated commitment to safe, reliable, high-quality vehicle systems.

Preferred Qualifications

At least 10 years of relevant engineering experience in product development, technical requirements, specifications, embedded controls, or related technical disciplines.

Master of Science degree in Engineering or a related field.

Experience developing ECU circuit-level requirements and supporting product development, analysis, validation, or design changes for safety-critical systems.

Deep knowledge of safety-critical embedded controls and experience with an automotive subsystem or another complex safety system.

Experience applying functional-safety standards such as ISO 26262, IEC 61508, IEC 62304, or DO-178C to hardware and low-level software requirements.

Experience with Electric Vehicle electrical/electronic architectures, including high-voltage propulsion, battery-management, charging, or control systems.

Experience configuring, adapting, or customizing DOORS or DOORS Next-Gen to support consistent requirements management and deployment.

Experience developing robust, maintainable C-language prototypes for hardware I/O and low-level software implementations.

DFSS Black Belt Certification.

Familiarity with ECU safety analysis methods and tools, including DFMEA, FMEDA, FTA, FIT-rate analysis, or related reliability and failure-analysis techniques.

Experience with automation, artificial intelligence, data-driven analysis, or competitive benchmarking applied to engineering requirements and documentation processes.

Success in This Role

Success in this role means establishing technical clarity and alignment across a complex ECU requirements portfolio; enabling common, reusable, and traceable CTRSs; improving the connection between requirements and verification; accelerating adoption of modern requirements-management practices; and helping engineering teams make timely, well-informed decisions. The Staff Engineer will be recognized for technical judgment, system-level thinking, constructive challenge, collaborative influence, and the ability to turn complex requirements problems into durable solutions.

Why Join Us?

This is an opportunity to help define the future of vehicle technology. You'll collaborate with experts across hardware, software, systems, controls, and integration engineering to solve difficult technical problems at scale. Whether you're driving architecture decisions, developing cutting-edge hardware, or validating complex systems, your work will directly influence the capabilities of millions of vehicles on the road.

If you're passionate about designing high-performance hardware, tackling multidisciplinary engineering challenges, and seeing your innovations come to life in production vehicles, we'd love to have you on the team.

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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 <25% for this role.

Relocation benefits are available for candidates who qualify under company policy.

About GM

Our vision is a world with Zero Crashes, Zero Emissions and Zero Congestion and we embrace the responsibility to lead the change that will make our world better, safer and more equitable for all.

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