Lead Principal Engineer, Cloud Platform Security

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

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) with company match

Paid time off - 20 days

Sick time - 40 hours/year (69 Seattle)

Maternity leave - 28-30 weeks

Baby bonding leave - 18 weeks

Holidays - 13 paid days

Job summary

Google is seeking a Principal Engineer for GCE Platform Security to lead the end-to-end security posture of Google Compute Engine. You will guide strategy across control planes and data planes, architect defenses, and drive proactive mitigation against evolving AI-driven threats.

You will coordinate with cross-functional teams to secure virtualization layers, host OS, and hardware isolation, ensuring compliance and zero-trust architectures across global cloud environments.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS/CE or equivalent practical experience.
• 13–15 years of professional software development, or 13 years with an advanced degree.
• Experience architecting, developing, and securing low-level systems software across virtualization and OS stack.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the overall technical authority and executive owner for GCE Platform Security.
• Formulate defenses to counter autonomous threat vectors and LLMed-assisted exploitation tools.
• Architect hardware-level defenses and isolation boundaries to mitigate CPU vulnerabilities.
• Lead security defenses across hypervisor technologies, VMMs, and host kernels.
• Drive host security and isolation with zero-trust architectures and hardware-assisted security.

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent practical experience

Advanced degree (Master's or PhD) in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Cybersecurity, or related field

Job description

Google is seeking a Principal Engineer for GCE Platform Security to lead the end-to-end security posture of Google Compute Engine. You will guide strategy across control planes and data planes, architect defenses, and drive proactive mitigation against evolving AI-driven threats.

You will coordinate with cross-functional teams to secure virtualization layers, host OS, and hardware isolation, ensuring compliance and zero-trust architectures across global cloud environments.