Senior Staff Software Engineer, Agentic Storytelling, Photos

Google; Cambridge (MA); On-site; USD 262,000 - 364,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity participation

Bonus potential

Job summary

Google is seeking a software engineer to lead agentic storytelling initiatives within the Photos team. This role focuses on developing scalable architectures, integrating curation, retrieval, and story-generation systems, and advancing AI capabilities using GenMedia and latest LLMs.

You will partner with cross-functional teams across Photos and Gemini, shaping product experiences that help users reminisce and create stories at scale, with opportunities to influence architecture and strategy in a

Qualifications

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

Responsibilities

• Define the multi-year technical goal and scalable architecture for agentic storytelling in Photos. Lead the technical strategy connecting curation, retrieval, and story generation systems with the Photos in-app agent and Gemini.
• Architect and develop conversational and agentic capabilities that leverage GenMedia and the latest LLMs to help users reminisce, curate, and create stories. Establish best practices for agentic systems, focusing on multi-turn orchestration, model evaluation, inference latency, and technical design at massive scale.
• Partner with engineering leads across Photos to build unified curation, retrieval, and editing capabilities, and work closely with research partners to integrate the latest generative models.
• Pioneer the use of AI to accelerate development; coach the team on agentic workflows and emerging practices to multiply engineering output and impact.

Skills

C++ programming

Design and architecture

Testing and launching

Data structures & algorithms

Technical leadership

Cross-functional leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Master’s or PhD in Engineering/CS

Job description

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

Note: By applying to this position you will have an opportunity to share your preferred working location from the following: New York, NY, USA; Mountain View, CA, USA; Cambridge, MA, USA.

Minimum qualifications:

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

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.
• 5 years of experience in a technical leadership role leading project teams and setting technical direction.
• 3 years of experience working in a complex, matrixed organization involving cross-functional, or cross-business projects.

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.

Photos Storytelling is on a mission to help 1.5 billion+ Photos users craft, experience, and share their life's stories using the world's most advanced AI. We partner directly with GDM to deploy the latest GenMedia models and are actively building agentic features that allow users to deeply reminisce and share their most meaningful moments.

In this role, you will lead our team's efforts to develop and ship agentic Storytelling experiences, working across our Memories and Video Editing teams to help redefine our app for the future. This is a rare, high visibility opportunity to define how AI-native storytelling works at Google scale.

Google Photos is a photo sharing and storage service developed by Google. Photos is one of the most sought after products at Google and is looking for both client-side (web and mobile), with server-side (search, storage, serving) and machine intelligence (learning, computer vision) Software Engineers. We are dedicated to making Google experiences centered around the user. 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

• Define the multi-year technical goal and scalable architecture for agentic storytelling in Photos. Lead the technical strategy connecting curation, retrieval, and story generation systems with the Photos in-app agent and Gemini.
• Architect and develop conversational and agentic capabilities that leverage GenMedia and the latest LLMs to help users reminisce, curate, and create stories. Establish best practices for agentic systems, focusing on multi-turn orchestration, model evaluation, inference latency, and technical design at massive scale.
• Partner with engineering leads across Photos to build unified curation, retrieval, and editing capabilities, and work closely with research partners to integrate the latest generative models.
• Pioneer the use of AI to accelerate development; coach the team on agentic workflows and emerging practices to multiply engineering output and impact.

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 .