Research Software Engineer, Google Research

Google Inc.; Mountain View, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 147,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Google Research in Mountain View, CA, is seeking a mid-level Research Software Engineer to advance foundational audio models and build scalable ML systems.

The role emphasizes designing novel modeling approaches, implementing end-to-end evaluation, and delivering low-latency, cost-effective solutions. Collaboration with scientists and cross-team partners is essential for turning research into practical technology.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 2 years of software development experience or 1 year with an advanced degree.
• Experience in machine learning research or quantitative research in fields such as mathematics, physical sciences, engineering, or economics.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and rigorously test novel modeling and algorithmic improvements for foundational audio models.
• Solve complex, open-ended challenges in audio understanding architectures, sequence modeling, and fast inference.
• Write product or system development code to integrate and evaluate audio capabilities across the ecosystem.
• Participate in or lead design reviews with peers and stakeholders to decide amongst available technologies.
• Triage product or system issues and debug, track, and resolve them by analyzing the sources of issues and their impact on service operations and quality.

Skills

Software development experience

ML research experience

ML frameworks

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience

Tools

JAX

PyTorch

Job description

Research Software Engineer, Google Research

Location: Mountain View, CA, USA

Mid Level

Experience driving progress, solving problems, and mentoring more junior team members; deeper expertise and applied knowledge within relevant area.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 2 years of experience with software development in one or more programming languages, or 1 year of experience with an advanced degree.
• Experience in machine learning research, or quantitative research in fields such as mathematics, physical sciences, engineering, or economics.
• Experience with machine learning frameworks (e.g., JAX or PyTorch).

Preferred qualifications:

• Master's degree or PhD in Computer Science or related technical fields.
• Publication in journals or conferences in machine learning or quantitative fields such as mathematics, physical sciences, engineering, or economics.
• Experience with sequence modeling, machine translation, speech/audio processing, diffusion language models, or reinforcement learning.
• Experience in building, scaling, and optimizing complex machine learning systems.
• Contribution to major open-source projects related to machine learning such as JAX, PyTorch, HuggingFace Transformers, Kaldi K2, ESPNet.

About the job

Google's software engineers develop the next-generation technologies that change how billions of users connect, explore, and interact with information and one another. Our products need to handle information at massive scale, and extend well beyond web search. We're looking for engineers who bring fresh ideas from all areas, including information retrieval, distributed computing, large-scale system design, networking and data storage, security, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, UI design and mobile; the list goes on and is growing every day. As a software engineer, you will work on a specific project critical to Google’s needs with opportunities to switch teams and projects as you and our fast-paced business grow and evolve. We need our engineers to be versatile, display leadership qualities and be enthusiastic to take on new problems across the full-stack as we continue to push technology forward.

Our team is pioneering new ways to interact with audio by building the next generation of foundational audio models. In this role, your mission is to deliver quality across practical audio tasks while achieving ultra-low latency and extreme cost-effectiveness as we are fundamentally rethinking the stack, focusing on novel sequence modeling architectures, new training methods, and advanced inference algorithms. You will innovate at the foundational level as our work has the potential to expand across other modalities. You will be a tightly knit, milestone-oriented team within Google Research that relies on close collaboration to push the boundaries of machine learning and turn ambitious research into reality.

Google Research addresses challenges that define the technology of today and tomorrow. From conducting fundamental research to influencing product development, our research teams have the opportunity to impact technology used by billions of people every day.

Our teams aspire to make discoveries that impact everyone, and core to our approach is sharing our research and tools to fuel progress in the field -- we publish regularly in academic journals, release projects as open source, and apply research to Google products.

Individual pay is determined by factors including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

US: $147000 - $210000 (USD) + 15% bonus target + equity + benefits

Learn more about benefits at Google.

• Design, implement, and rigorously test novel modeling and algorithmic improvements for foundational audio models.
• Solve complex, open-ended challenges in audio understanding architectures, sequence modeling, and fast inference.
• Write product or system development code to integrate and evaluate audio capabilities across the ecosystem.
• Participate in or lead design reviews with peers and stakeholders to decide amongst available technologies.
• Triage product or system issues and debug, track, and resolve them by analyzing the sources of issues and their impact on service operations and quality.

Google is proud to be an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. We are committed to building a workforce that is representative of the users we serve, creating a culture of belonging, and providing an equal employment opportunity regardless of race, creed, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition (including breastfeeding), expecting or parents-to-be, criminal histories consistent with legal requirements, or any other basis protected by law. See also Google's EEO Policy , Know your rights: workplace discrimination is illegal , Belonging at Google , and How we hire .

Google is a global company and, in order to facilitate efficient collaboration and communication globally, English proficiency is a requirement for all roles unless stated otherwise in the job posting.

Equity is granted exclusively and discretionarily by Alphabet Inc. on the basis of an agreement concluded between you and Alphabet Inc. Alphabet Inc. is your sole contractual partner with respect to equity grants. GSU grants are not guaranteed, are discretionary, are subject to approval by the Alphabet Inc. board of directors or its delegate, the terms of the relevant Alphabet Inc. stock plan, and your grant agreement. They have no impact on statutory payments. Current or past grants do not confer an acquired right.