Principal Cloud Platform Security Architect — Equity Eligible

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

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) with company match

Vacation: 20 days per year

Sick time: Seattle 69 hours/year

Maternity leave: 28–30 weeks

Baby Bonding Leave: 18 weeks

13 paid holidays

Job summary

Google is seeking a Principal Engineer for GCE Platform Security to own the end-to-end security posture of Google Compute Engine. You will lead architectural defenses, mitigate CPU vulnerabilities, and guide zero-trust and isolation strategies across distributed control planes and node data planes.

This role demands navigating AI-enabled threat vectors with proactive defense-in-depth across the platform. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams, shape multi-year security strategy, and

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 15 years of professional software development experience, or 13 with advanced degree.
• Experience architecting, developing, and securing low-level systems software across virtualization and OS stack.
• Advanced degree in CS/CE/Cybersecurity or related field is preferred.
• 20 years of software engineering experience with leadership in cloud platform security, hypervisor security, hardware/CPU security, or OS defense.
• Experience defending against AI/LLM-accelerated vulnerability discovery and automated exploit synthesis.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the overall technical authority and executive owner for GCE Platform Security.
• Formulate architectural defenses against agency threat vectors and enable automated vulnerability discovery and rapid incident response.
• Architect hardware-level defenses to mitigate CPU vulnerabilities and cross-tenant leakage.
• Lead security defenses across hypervisors, VMMs, host kernels, and low-level runtimes to prevent virtualization escapes.
• Drive the outlook for host security, zero-trust host architectures, and hardware-assisted security.

Skills

Software development

Security architecture

Hypervisor security

Cross-organizational leadership

Hardware/CPU security

AI/LLM threat defense

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related

Advanced degree (Master/PhD)

Tools

KVM

QEMU

Cloud Hypervisor

Linux kernel internals

Job description

Google is seeking a Principal Engineer for GCE Platform Security to own the end-to-end security posture of Google Compute Engine. You will lead architectural defenses, mitigate CPU vulnerabilities, and guide zero-trust and isolation strategies across distributed control planes and node data planes.

This role demands navigating AI-enabled threat vectors with proactive defense-in-depth across the platform. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams, shape multi-year security strategy, and