GKE AI Inference Platform Lead

Google; Kirkland (WA); On-site; USD 307,000 - 427,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

Life insurance

Disability insurance

401(k) with company match

Paid time off 20 days/year

Sick time 40 hours/year (Seattle 69)

Maternity/Parental leave 28-30 weeks

Baby bonding leave 18 weeks

13 paid holidays

Job summary

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) is the industry standard for container orchestration and the core of Google Cloud’s modernization strategy. We are now embarking on a mission to reinvent GKE and Kubernetes as the premier substrate for the next generation of computing: AI inference at massive scale.

As the Principal Engineer, you will lead the technical reinvention of GKE to become the inference engine for the world.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 15 years of experience in software engineering, or 15 years of experience with an advanced degree.
• Experience building distributed systems and driving technical strategy for platform-level infrastructure.
• Experience with Kubernetes, container runtimes, and AI/ML infrastructure (e.g., inference serving, LLM, hardware accelerators).

Responsibilities

• Lead architectural direction for llm-d, ensuring a highly optimized, scalable foundation for distributed LLM and RL serving across the GKE fleet.
• Define GKE's evolution to support massive-scale inference and RL, solving novel orchestration problems in dynamic resource allocation, multi-host TPU/GPU scheduling, and high-throughput networking.
• Partner with strategic AI model builders, DeepMind, and Vertex AI to co-develop an AI-first roadmap, leveraging Google's custom silicon to optimize throughput and compute density.
• Lead the broader Kubernetes ecosystem and OSS community, driving key upstream initiatives to establish industry standards for AI, RL, and accelerator orchestration.

Skills

Distributed systems

Kubernetes

Container runtimes

AI/ML infrastructure

Technical leadership

Strategic planning

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Master's degree or PhD (preferred)

Job description

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) is the industry standard for container orchestration and the core of Google Cloud’s modernization strategy. We are now embarking on a mission to reinvent GKE and Kubernetes as the premier substrate for the next generation of computing: AI inference at massive scale.

As the Principal Engineer, you will lead the technical reinvention of GKE to become the inference engine for the world.