System, methods, and other embodiments described herein relate to a service-oriented data architecture within a vehicle. In one embodiment, a computing system for controlling electronic systems of a vehicle includes a system processing unit that executes multiple virtual machines (VMs) to isolate different services of the vehicle. The computing system includes a communication plane spanning between the multiple VMs to provide communications across the multiple VMs and with a mechatronics layer and a sensor layer of the vehicle. The multiple VMs provide the different services by executing microservices that are formed to be self-contained and standardized independent of programmed functions and to interoperate with the communication plane and the multiple VMs.