Staff Data Engineer

Job Description

This role is categorized as hybrid. This means the successful candidate is expected to report to Warren Global Technical Center or Austin Technical Center three times per week, at minimum [or other frequency dictated by the business if more than 3 days].

The Role
We are seeking a highly skilled Privacy by Design Engineer to design, build, and evolve modern, cloud-native enterprise applications that power critical Data Privacy initiatives. This role is for a strong software engineer first; Data Privacy knowledge is valuable, but prior privacy experience is not required.
This is a hands-on individual-contributor role for an engineer who can operate as both a technical driver and an architect. You will take ownership of complex initiatives from discovery and technical design through implementation, deployment, and ongoing operation. You will shape architecture and engineering direction, build scalable microservices and secure APIs using Java, Spring Boot, and Microsoft Azure, and partner closely with product managers, Legal, architects, and cross-functional teams to deliver business outcomes.
You will lead through technical expertise and execution—not formal people management. You will help teams make sound engineering decisions, raise quality standards, and navigate complex problems in a fast-paced Agile environment.
What You’ll Do

• Own the technical direction and end-to-end delivery of services and initiatives, from requirements and architecture through development, testing, deployment, observability, support, and continuous improvement.
• Design, develop, and evolve scalable microservices and RESTful APIs using Java and Spring Boot on Microsoft Azure.
• Make and communicate architecture decisions that balance business needs, security, reliability, scalability, maintainability, and delivery speed.
• Build secure, resilient services using Azure capabilities, container-based workloads, and cloud-native design patterns.
• Translate business needs into technical designs, implementation plans, and incremental delivery milestones in partnership with Legal, product teams, architects, and other stakeholders.
• Drive engineering work across team and organizational boundaries, resolve technical dependencies, and keep complex initiatives moving toward delivery.
• Apply event-driven architectures, messaging, and streaming platforms such as Kafka or Azure Event Hubs.
• Use CI/CD pipelines, automation, and DevOps practices to improve deployment quality and operational readiness.
• Apply relational and NoSQL databases, selecting appropriate technologies and data patterns for the use case.
• Establish and improve observability using logging, metrics, and tracing; use operational insights to guide continuous improvement.
• Use AI-assisted development tools thoughtfully to accelerate delivery while maintaining code quality, security, and engineering judgment.
• Lead technical design discussions, architecture forums, and code reviews; explain tradeoffs and help teams converge on effective solutions.
• Mentor and support other engineers through technical guidance, pairing, and knowledge sharing, without direct people-management responsibilities.
• Identify opportunities to improve engineering practices, tooling, and platform capabilities, and drive adoption of effective changes.

Your Skills & Abilities (Required Qualifications)

• 8+ years of professional software development experience building production-grade applications.
• Experience designing and operating large-scale, highly available systems in a global enterprise environment
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Software Engineering, or a closely related technical field, or equivalent demonstrable professional software engineering experience.
• Demonstrated ability to coach and elevate engineers through technical guidance, mentoring, and pairing. Foster collaboration, psychological safety, and continuous learning through day-to-day technical leadership. Simplify complex problems and present a clear technical perspective to non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong hands-on experience with Java and Spring Boot, including microservices-based architectures.
• Champion change and drive adoption of tools, patterns, and engineering practices.
• Proven experience designing, building, and consuming RESTful APIs.

• Practical experience with Microsoft Azure, preferably including container-based workloads.
• Strong experience with event-driven architectures, messaging, and streaming platforms such as Kafka, Event Hubs, or similar.
• Experience with Kubernetes (AKS) or similar for container orchestration, deployment, and scaling
• Working knowledge of relational and NoSQL databases such as PostgreSQL, Oracle, MySQL, Redis, or Cassandra.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, DevOps practices, and Git-based workflows.
• Solid understanding of cloud-native architectures, distributed systems, resiliency, and scalability patterns.
• Experience working in Agile/Scrum development environments.
• Demonstrated ability to drive complex technical initiatives, lead design discussions, and influence architecture and engineering decisions through hands-on contribution.
• Hands-on experience with observability tooling, including logging, metrics, and tracing.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with a bias toward action, ownership, and pragmatic delivery.
• Ability to communicate technical concepts and tradeoffs clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

What Can Give You a Competitive Advantage (Preferred Qualifications)

• Data Privacy background or experience is helpful but not required; strong software engineering skills are the priority.
• Practical experience with security best practices, including OAuth2/OIDC, JWT, and secrets management.
• Experience modernizing legacy or monolithic applications into microservices and cloud-native architectures.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence across teams and levels.

This job may be eligible for relocation benefits.

Company Vehicle: Upon successful completion of a motor vehicle report review, you will be eligible to participate in a company vehicle evaluation program, through which you will be assigned a General Motors vehicle to drive and evaluate. Note: program participants are required to purchase/lease a qualifying GM vehicle every four years unless one of a limited number of exceptions applies.

Compensation: 

• The expected base compensation for this role is: $159,200 - $220,500. Actual base compensation within the identified 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: 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.

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., H-1B, OPT, STEM OPT, CPT, TN, J-1, etc.)

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