# James Gruss Jr > Staff Software Engineer at Motional | C++ | robotics platforms | performance engineering Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/jamesgrussjr Software Engineer with a passion for well-oiled distributed systems. At Motional, I led architecture and delivery of our core onboard communications infrastructure, and I’m now focused on system performance engineering: improving robot stability, determinism, and observability. I like first-principles problem solving: measuring what matters, finding the real constraints, and aligning people around the highest leverage work. ## Work Experience ### Staff Software Engineer @ Motional Jan 2026 – Present | Greater Pittsburgh Region - Initiating a focused system performance effort across the onboard autonomy platform to raise measurement/debugging capability and reduce tail latency/jitter. - Driving cross-system investigations of contention and bottlenecks, translating findings into reliability and performance improvements. - Delivering tracing/profiling tooling (BPF, perf, flamegraphs, IntelPT, etc.) and repeatable workflows/playbooks to scale performance work across teams. - Supporting the onboard communications framework previously led through rollout/stabilization; reduced “super-late” message events by ~10×. ### Senior Software Engineer @ Motional Jan 2022 – Jan 2026 | Greater Pittsburgh Region - Technical lead for the autonomous vehicle onboard communication framework (2022–2024/25): owned architecture, execution, and delivery across teams. - Led selection and migration from a legacy messaging system (HOL blocking, reliability/scale limits) to a modern stack (incl. DDS); authored proposals through CTO-level review, built POCs, and drove production rollout. - Led a team of 3–5 engineers over ~2.5 years from concept → implementation → operational stabilization; materially improved tail latency, drops/reliability, scalability, and RCA time. -Drove on-vehicle network re-architecture to support the new messaging/data-passing model (segmentation, interface configuration, switch settings) end-to-end. - Late 2025: transitioned focus toward system performance engineering (eBPF + userspace tracing), with emphasis on tail latency and system jitter. ### Software Engineer @ Motional Jan 2020 – Jan 2022 | Greater Pittsburgh Region - platform/middleware engineer for autonomous vehicle software: message/data passing foundations, task runtime, embedded linux components, and core infrastructure used by onboard systems. - built/maintained production C++ components and tooling ### Cofounder & Software Engineer @ Olympia Technologies LLC Jan 2016 – Jan 2020 | Erie, Pennsylvania Area - co-founded startup; owned backend + data architecture and core platform design. - built cloud services and APIs (aws, python/node, nosql/serverless); delivered production mobile app backend, proven with hundreds of users for > a year. ### Lead Software Engineer @ GE Transportation, a Wabtec company Jan 2020 – Jan 2020 | Erie, Pennsylvania, United States Lead configuration management for the Modular Control Architecture (MCA) program (next-gen locomotive control system), driving sw/config/firmware release/config governance and cross-team delivery. ### Embedded Software Engineer @ GE Transportation, a Wabtec company Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | Erie-Meadville Area - Modern C++ middleware engineer across embedded Linux and QNX for next-gen control system components; built DDS-based services to offload performance + diagnostic data for analysis and troubleshooting. - Proposed and designed an asymmetric-encryption + keystore strategy to encrypt files on edge devices and support offline decryption; drove architecture and design reviews through implementation and merge by a partner team. - Contributed heavily to a diagnostic embedded web server, including robust multi-threaded signaling/synchronization patterns between components, utilizing QNX specific primitives. ### Software Engineer (EEDP) @ GE Transportation, a Wabtec company Jan 2017 – Jan 2019 | Erie, Pennsylvania, United States Edison Engineering Development Program (EEDP) — Software Track AI Solutions Architect (Feb 2019 – Jul 2019) - Built a full-stack, edge-deployed inspection system (excl. model training) - Delivered an end-to-end pipeline for image collection and automated labeling at deployment scale, deployed to factory site. Software Engineer, Trip Optimizer (Jul 2018 – Feb 2019) - Integrated TLS (OpenSSL) into a custom multi-threaded C++ WebSocket protocol; debugged concurrency/protocol defects and hardened the library for internal + external use. - Stood up certificate authority workflows and produced vendor-facing TLS/CA training materials; delivered integration support and training at customer/vendor sites. Software Systems Engineer (Feb 2018 – Aug 2018) - Established a SysML/UML modeling workflow linking system requirements to software services; trained engineers on the process for a modular controls NPI. - Architected performance monitoring + timer services; contributed CI/CD via Jenkins pipelines and reusable templates across microservices. Embedded Software Engineer, Heavy Haul (Jul 2017 – Jan 2018) - Delivered production features and defect fixes in a large, long-lived C++/QNX codebase powering in-service locomotives; worked from specs with integration/test teams under tight timelines. - Owned the software side of select customer releases (incl. field engineer coordination and release calls) for major rail operators. ### Software Engineering Intern @ GE Transportation, a Wabtec company Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | Erie, Pennsylvania Area automated and documented engine-controls software testing for a new locomotive platform (python/c++ on qnx) ### Computer Science Lab Assistant @ Gannon University Jan 2014 – Jan 2016 | Erie, Pennsylvania Area ### Engineering Intern @ GE Transportation Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 built java/vb tooling + workflow to make technical publications searchable/comparable via metadata; cut doc retrieval & reuse friction. ## Education ### Software Engineering in B.S., Computer Science Gannon University Jan 2013 – Jan 2017 ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/james-gruss-jr --- Source: https://flows.cv/jamesgrussjr JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/jamesgrussjr/resume.json Last updated: 2026-03-23