Senior Staff Software Engineer, Infrastructure Spanner Team

Google; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 262,000 - 364,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Bonus target

Benefits package

Job summary

Google is seeking a senior role in Sunnyvale, CA, to drive AI-first engineering for Spanner and its next-gen Batch I/O interface. The position focuses on architecture, reliability, and scalability across a global distributed database system.

You will lead AI-powered migrations, refactoring, testing, and verification processes while mentoring engineers and advancing cross-team collaboration in a complex environment. Strong design and distributed systems expertise are essential.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 5 years of experience with design and architecture; and testing or launching software products.
• Experience building and developing large-scale infrastructure or distributed systems.
• Experience innovating the development process using AI.
• Master’s degree or PhD in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
• 3 years of experience working in a complex, matrixed organization involving cross-functional, or cross-business projects.
• Deep understanding of database engine internals, query execution/query optimization, or distributed data storage.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical direction for Spanner's next-gen Batch I/O interface, including Database branching and bulk processing, and own the architectural bridge between Serving and other Spanner subsystems.
• Lead the modernization of Spanner Serving using AI-assisted development to reduce technical debt and operational toil without compromising correctness or availability.
• Design, build, and deploy AI-powered tools, agents, and automated workflows that speed up the team's development lifecycle, including code review, testing, verification, debugging, and incident response.
• Define AI-first engineering practices for the team: find the use cases with the biggest payoff and reviewing the work of AI agents, and measure the effect on speed and quality.
• Influence and mentor engineers across Spanner, growing their technical depth and AI fluency, and share reusable patterns with partner teams across Google.

Skills

Design & architecture

Large-scale infrastructure

AI innovation in development

Testing & launching software

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Master's degree or PhD in Engineering/Computer Science

Job description

Minimum qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 5 years of experience with design and architecture; and testing or launching software products.
• Experience building and developing large-scale infrastructure or distributed systems.
• Experienced in innovating the development process using AI.

Preferred qualifications

• Master’s degree or PhD in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
• 3 years of experience working in a complex, matrixed organization involving cross-functional, or cross-business projects.
• Deep understanding of database engine internals, query execution/query optimization, or distributed data storage.

About The Job

Spanner is a globally-replicated, scalable SQL-aware database that provides strong consistency guarantees and high availability. It is a key asset of Google’s external and internal product portfolio of database services. See go/spanner-roadmap for the latest Spanner roadmap.

Spanner Serving manages the essential components and servers where data are hosted, manipulated, served, and distributed. This is the core of Spanner and a critical part for correctness, availability and scalability of Spanner databases across the globe.

We are also using AI to transform both Spanner and the way we build it. We apply coding agents and Large Language Model (LLM)-based tools to speed up migrations, refactoring, testing, and verification across a large, mature, correctness-critical code base, and we are building AI-first workflows that measurably increase our productivity while keeping Spanner's high bar for correctness and availability.

Google Cloud accelerates every organization’s ability to digitally transform its business and industry. We deliver enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Google’s cutting-edge technology, and tools that help developers build more sustainably. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems. 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.

• Set the technical direction for Spanner's next-gen Batch I/O interface, including Database branching and bulk processing, and own the architectural bridge between Serving and other Spanner subsystems.
• Lead the modernization of Spanner Serving using AI-assisted development (e.g., coding agents, LLM-driven code migration and refactoring) to reduce technical debt and operational toil without compromising correctness or availability.
• Design, build, and deploy AI-powered tools, agents, and automated workflows that speed up the team's development lifecycle, including code review, testing, verification, debugging, and incident response.
• Define AI-first engineering practices for the team: find the use cases with the biggest payoff and reviewing the work of AI agents, and measure the effect on speed and quality.
• Influence and mentor engineers across Spanner, growing their technical depth and AI fluency, and share reusable patterns with partner teams across Google.

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 .