The Vehicle software is moving towards software-centric architectures and hence software-defined vehicles. With this transition, there is a need to handle various challenges posed during development and validation. Some of the challenges include unavailability of hardware limiting the evaluation of various hardware options, board bring-up and hence leading to delays in software development targeted for the hardware, eventually leading to delayed validation cycles. To overcome the above challenges, we present in this whitepaper a virtual ECU (vECU) framework integrated with a CI/CD pipeline. A Virtual ECU (Electronic Control Unit) is a software-based emulation of a physical ECU. The adoption of virtual ECUs empowers development teams to commence software development prior to the availability of physical hardware. Multiple tools are available to demonstrate virtual ECUs, for example, QEMU, Synopsys, QNX Cabin, etc. vECU setup, when paired with a CI/CD pipeline, allows continuous integration, rapid iterations, and improved testing coverage. The integrated framework for virtual ECU and CI/CD thereby Significantly expedites the entire software lifecycle, enabling early-stage software development and validation. This research paper presents a vECU framework developed using QEMU as the virtualization tool to simulate NXP high-performance compute platforms. Instead of directly emulating hardware, custom Yocto-based images for GoldBox and i.MX8 were run on QEMU to replicate Body, Gateway, and Cluster functionalities. For CI/CD integration, Gerrit, Jenkins, and Azure DevOps were used to enable automated builds, reviews, and validation workflows. To establish communication, CAN and Ethernet protocols were utilized. Specifically, vSomeIP was used over Ethernet to enable service-oriented communication. Integration of this framework into the SDV workflow has shown significant improvements in early development and validation.