Survivability Strategist - GM Defense (Global)

GM Defense delivers integrated vehicles, power and propulsion, and autonomy and connectivity solutions for global defense, security, and government customers. By leveraging GM’s advanced commercial vehicle platforms, engineering expertise, and large-scale manufacturing, GM Defense rapidly adapts proven technologies into military-grade, mission-ready solutions that help customers improve mobility, readiness, and sustainment while managing cost and complexity.

The Survivability Strategist is an individual contributor role responsible for defining the survivability strategy and roadmap for GM Defense in alignment with mission needs, customer expectations, and program objectives. This role determines the survivability capabilities, technical approaches, manufacturing strategies, and enabling workstreams required to build an enduring enterprise capability, including what work should be developed in-house, what should be outsourced, what partnerships should be established, and what design, material, manufacturing, and analysis standards are needed to support execution. The role leads the development of survivability concepts, requirements, trade studies, and integration recommendations to ensure survivability considerations are built into product architecture, design, and validation from the outset.

What You'll Do

• Define the survivability strategy and roadmap for GM Defense in support of mission requirements, threat environments, customer expectations, and long-term business objectives.
• Determine which survivability capabilities, analyses, tools, and technical workstreams should be developed in-house versus outsourced.
• Identify, evaluate, and help establish external partnerships needed to build and scale survivability capability.
• Develop and institutionalize survivability design best practices, material guidelines, manufacturing methods, and technical standards for use across programs.
• Guide development of survivability-related requirements, design criteria, technical recommendations, and integration approaches across the product.
• Lead trade studies to balance survivability, weight, performance, cost, manufacturability, and program timing.
• Support development of survivability analysis methods, assessment approaches, and validation strategies to strengthen technical decision-making.
• Work cross-functionally with engineering, manufacturing, integration, validation, supply chain, and program teams to embed survivability into product development.
• Support identification and assessment of vulnerabilities, failure modes, and integration risks related to survivability.
• Serve as a technical point of contact for survivability strategy and implementation with internal stakeholders, partners, and customers as needed.

Your Skills & Abilities (Required Qualifications)

• BSE, BS in Mechanical Engineering, Materials Engineering, Systems Engineering, or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years professional experience in survivability-related engineering, strategy development, product integration, or equivalent technical roles.
• Demonstrates effective interpersonal and communication skills to collaborate successfully with internal stakeholders, customers, suppliers, and external partners.
• Strong understanding of survivability-related engineering principles, including design tradeoffs, material behavior, manufacturing strategies, and analysis methods.
• Proven ability to define technical strategy and roadmap, including decisions on in-house development, outsourcing, partnerships, and enterprise capability build-out.
• Demonstrated ability to lead trade studies that balance survivability, weight, performance, cost, manufacturability, and program timing.
• Strong analytical ability to identify vulnerabilities, assess technical risk, and develop design, material, manufacturing, and analysis standards to support execution.
• Demonstrated technical and professional skills in survivability-related product development, technical integration, and cross-functional decision-making.
• Ability to translate mission and threat-based needs into clear survivability requirements, practical engineering guidance, and executable technical recommendations.

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.

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.

Non-Discrimination and Equal Employment Opportunities

General Motors is committed to being a workplace that is not only free of unlawful discrimination, but one that genuinely fosters inclusion and belonging. We strongly believe that providing an inclusive workplace creates an environment in which our employees can thrive and develop better products for our customers.

We encourage interested candidates to review the key responsibilities and qualifications for each role and apply for any positions that match their skills and capabilities. Applicants in the recruitment process may be required, where applicable, to successfully complete a role-related assessment(s) and/or a pre-employment screening prior to beginning employment.

Accommodations

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