Principal Platform Security Architect (Cloud & VM)

Socket.dev; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 307,000 - 427,000; Full time

Job summary

Google Cloud seeks a Principal Engineer for GCE Platform Security to serve as the premier technical authority and owner of the security posture for Google Compute Engine. You will lead end-to-end security across the control plane and data plane, defending against AI-driven threats, hardware-level vulnerabilities, and ensuring zero-trust, supply-chain integrity for regulated cloud environments.

This role impacts enterprise workloads, AI research labs, and global infrastructure across Google Cloud

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• 15 years of software development experience, 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, defining multi-year security strategy across control planes and data planes.
• Formulate defenses against autonomous agentic threats and LLM-assisted exploitation, with automated vulnerability discovery and rapid incident response.
• Architect hardware-level defenses to mitigate CPU vulnerabilities, side-channels, and cross-tenant leakage.
• Lead security defenses and privilege reduction across hypervisors, VMMs, host kernels, and low-level runtimes with sandboxing.
• Drive host security architecture, zero-trust host models, and secure offloading of security functions.

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

Experience architecting, developing, and securing low-level systems software across virtualization/OS stack

Experience defending against AI/LLM-accelerated threats and vulnerability discovery

Cross-organizational technical leadership and executive communication

Hardware-software security co-design including CPU microarchitectural vulnerabilities

Job description

Google Cloud seeks a Principal Engineer for GCE Platform Security to serve as the premier technical authority and owner of the security posture for Google Compute Engine. You will lead end-to-end security across the control plane and data plane, defending against AI-driven threats, hardware-level vulnerabilities, and ensuring zero-trust, supply-chain integrity for regulated cloud environments.

This role impacts enterprise workloads, AI research labs, and global infrastructure across Google Cloud