Senior Staff Software Engineer

Google; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 262,000 - 364,000; 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

Job summary

Google's Compute Engine team seeks a Senior Staff Software Engineer to lead modernization of the virtualization stack and drive memory-safe Rust adoption across large-scale C++ systems.

You will architect, mentor, and deliver across cross-functional teams, shaping AI-assisted migration tools, C++/Rust interoperability, and high-assurance security for cloud infrastructure.

In-person interviews may be required as part of the hiring process.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 8 years of experience in systems software engineering, software architecture, and low-level programming in C++ and Rust.
• 5 years of experience with design and architecture; and testing/launching software products.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership on high-impact projects.
• Influence and coach a distributed team of engineers.
• Facilitate alignment and clarity across teams on goals, outcomes, and timelines.
• Execute large-scale transformation of critical virtualization and host systems code into idiomatic, memory-safe Rust.
• Pioneer agentic coding techniques and AI-assisted migration tools to accelerate code conversion velocity.

Skills

Systems software engineering

C++

Rust

Architecture design

Mentoring engineers

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience

Master’s degree or PhD in Engineering/CS

Tools

C++

Rust

Linux

KVM

Hypervisors

Job description

In most instances, this position requires in-person interviews as part of the hiring process.

In accordance with Washington state law, we are highlighting our comprehensive benefits package, which is available to all eligible US based employees. Benefits for this role include:

• Health, dental, vision, life, disability insurance
• Retirement Benefits: 401(k) with company match
• Paid Time Off: 20 days of vacation per year, accruing at a rate of 6.15 hours per pay period for the first five years of employment
• Sick Time: 40 hours/year (increased to 69 hours/year for Seattle) including 5 discretionary sick days per instance
• Maternity Leave (Short-Term Disability + Baby Bonding): 28-30 weeks
• Baby Bonding Leave: 18 weeks
• Holidays: 13 paid days per year

Minimum qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 8 years of experience in systems software engineering, software architecture, and low-level programming in C++ and Rust.
• 5 years of experience with design and architecture; and testing/launching software products.
• Experience architecting and shipping large-scale systems software (e.g., virtualization, hypervisors/VMMs, OS kernels, or cloud infrastructure).
• Experience leading cross-organizational technical strategy and mentoring senior engineers.

Preferred qualifications

• Master’s degree or PhD in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
• 8 years of experience with data structures and algorithms.
• Experience leading large-scale C++-to-Rust migrations, C++/Rust interoperability (FFI), and establishing idiomatic Rust standards across an organization.
• Experience applying AI/agentic coding workflows, LLM-assisted code translation, or automated refactoring tools to production systems.
• Experience with Linux/KVM, Virtual Machine Monitors, hardware virtualization, and security sandboxing.
• Expertise in functional verification for critical infrastructure, including differential fuzzing, property-based testing, or equivalence checking.

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.

With your technical expertise you will manage project priorities, deadlines, and deliverables. You will design, develop, test, deploy, maintain, and enhance software solutions.

As a Senior Staff Software Engineer on Google Compute Engine’s team, you will lead the technical strategy and execution to modernize Google Cloud’s foundational virtualization stack into memory-safe Rust. You will pioneer the use of agentic AI coding workflows, automated migration pipelines, and C++/Rust interoperability tooling to transform mission-critical, low-level C++ systems code into high-performance, standalone Rust. Beyond core virtualization, you will serve as a key technical catalyst driving Rust architecture, tooling standards, and engineering adoption across Google Compute Engine.

The AI and Infrastructure team is redefining what’s possible. We empower Google customers with breakthrough capabilities and insights by delivering AI and Infrastructure at unparalleled scale, efficiency, reliability and velocity. Our customers include Googlers, Google Cloud customers, and billions of Google users worldwide.

We're the driving force behind Google's groundbreaking innovations, empowering the development of our cutting-edge AI models, delivering unparalleled computing power to global services, and providing the essential platforms that enable developers to build the future. From software to hardware our teams are shaping the future of world-leading hyperscale computing, with key teams working on the development of our TPUs, Vertex AI for Google Cloud, Google Global Networking, Data Center operations, systems research, and much more.

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

US: $262000 - $364000 (USD) + 25% bonus target + equity + benefits

Responsibilities

Learn more about benefits at Google .

• Provide technical leadership on high-impact projects.
• Influence and coach a distributed team of engineers.
• Facilitate alignment and clarity across teams on goals, outcomes, and timelines.
• Execute large-scale transformation of critical virtualization and host systems code (including Virtual Machine Monitor and node infrastructure components) into idiomatic, memory-safe Rust.
• Pioneer agentic coding techniques, AI-assisted migration workflows, and modern C++/Rust interoperability tooling to dramatically accelerate code conversion velocity while improving modularity and maintainability.

Google is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. See also Google's EEO Policy and EEO is the Law. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know by completing our Accommodations for Applicants form .