Advanced Propulsion Engineering at General Motors is a rapidly developing area of automotive technology. We are creating cutting-edge propulsion systems that provide industry-leading energy, power, durability, and safety capability for future vehicles including EV, HEV, and advanced concepts. Our team is critical to achieving GM’s vision of Zero Emissions, Zero Crashes, and Zero Congestion.
In this role, you will serve as the technical architect for battery structures and body integration within the New Products Engineering team. This role is intended for a deeply technical leader who can define, evaluate, and mature battery structure concepts for new vehicle architectures. The ideal candidate brings strong expertise in battery enclosure architecture, body or frame integration, and the structural tradeoffs required to deliver competitive solutions in mass, cost, manufacturability, safety, and performance.
Success in this role requires strong technical judgment, cross-functional influence, and the ability to drive alignment across battery, vehicle, safety, manufacturing, and advanced architecture stakeholders.
Responsibilities
- Be committed to safety in everything our team does.
- Promote an inclusive team environment that values diverse backgrounds, opinions, and ideas.
- Serve as the technical architect for battery structures and body integration for advanced vehicle architectures.
- Lead the architectural relationship between the RESS and the vehicle body or frame to achieve the best balance of structural performance, packaging efficiency, mass, cost, manufacturability, and system capability.
- Define and mature battery structure requirements, design enablers, and structural concepts that support use across a vehicle architecture.
- Lead early concept development, feasibility assessments, and trade-off studies for new battery structure architectures, including mass, cost, investment, packaging, and performance evaluations.
- Drive technical down-selects and cross-functional alignment ahead of math syncs and virtual gates with the appropriate level of design and analysis fidelity.
- Develop robust battery structure concepts that meet pack- and vehicle-level requirements for crash, durability, stiffness, dynamics, sealing, and system integration.
- Lead integration of battery structures with key system interfaces including cell, module, electrical, thermal, chassis, underbody, and safety requirements.
- Develop structural concepts that enable robust, scalable, and cost-efficient manufacturing, including practical joining, forming, sealing, and assembly strategies.
- Provide technical leadership to advanced battery structures engineers and cross-functional partners, driving consistent engineering practices across architectures.
- Partner proactively with advanced vehicle design, battery architecture, manufacturing architects, CAE, safety, packaging, thermal, electrical, and supplier teams to develop practical architectural solutions.
- Drive innovation in battery structure and vehicle integration by leveraging internal research, supplier initiatives, trade groups, and external benchmarking.
- Benchmark automotive and adjacent industries for new technologies and integration approaches that improve vehicle efficiency and competitiveness.
- Support development of engineering standards, best practices, and manufacturing requirements related to battery structures and body integration.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in engineering.
- 10+ years of engineering experience.
- 5+ years of direct experience in battery structures and/or RESS structural integration with vehicle body or frame systems.
- Demonstrated experience leading architectural trade studies and making concept-level decisions that balance mass, cost, investment, performance, packaging, and manufacturability.
- Experience with structural design and engineering for highly integrated systems, including battery enclosure interfaces to vehicle body, frame, chassis, thermal, and electrical systems.
- Experience with common production processes such as metal forming, castings, extrusions, joining, sealing, body shop processing, and tooling development.
- Experience developing structures to comply with Motor Vehicle Safety Standards and applicable GM internal performance and safety requirements.
- Demonstrated ability to work effectively across functions and influence technical direction without direct authority.
- High level of interpersonal skills to work effectively either independently or with others as required.
Preferred Qualifications
- Demonstrated expertise working with CAE, Safety, and Formability analysis teams, including the ability to translate analysis results into practical architectural changes.
- Strong understanding of advanced vehicle development processes and virtual gate expectations.
- Understanding of the roles and capabilities of Vehicle Packaging, Chassis, Safety, Manufacturing, CAE, Thermal, Electrical, and related groups in the development of new vehicle architectures.
- Strong understanding of structural load paths, crash and barrier considerations, joining strategies, and production-feasible battery enclosure concepts.
- Experience defining engineering requirements and design best practices for battery structures across multiple architectures.
- Experience working with suppliers to mature structural concepts into manufacturing-ready solutions.
- Master’s degree in engineering.
- DFSS Black Belt Certification.
