Senior Staff Software Engineer, Production PKIS

Google LLC; Kirkland (WA); On-site; USD 262,000 - 364,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, vision, life, disabled

401(k) with company match

Paid time off 20 days/year

Sick time 40 hours/year (Seattle 69)

Maternity leave 28-30 weeks

Baby bonding leave 18 weeks

13 paid holidays

Job summary

Google LLC in Kirkland, WA is seeking a senior software engineer with deep PKI and C++ expertise to advance Google's identity and security infrastructure. You will define multi-year architectural roadmaps, drive cross-team design reviews, and lead initiatives across distributed engineering groups.

Responsibilities include shaping production identity platforms, implementing post-quantum readiness, and aligning security mandates with pragmatic engineering roadmaps.

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 overarching multi-year architectural blueprint across the domains to prevent technical fragmentation.
• Author and drive the 3–5 year technical goal for production identity, anticipating industry shifts in post-quantum readiness, confidential computing, and agentic workflows.
• Align stakeholders on priorities, shared dependencies, and architectural best practices.
• Partner closely with Security Leadership, Cloud Foundations, Infrasec SRE, CorpEng, and Hardware Security teams to align security boundaries and platform roadmaps.
• Lead operational excellence, multi-region fault tolerance, automated key rotations, and disaster recovery readiness across all production services.

Skills

C++ programming

PKI

Identity architectures

Architectural design

Leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience

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

Note: By applying to this position you will have an opportunity to share your preferred working location from the following: Kirkland, WA, USA; Sunnyvale, CA, 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

• Experience setting multi-team technical strategy or acting as a Lead Architect/Tech Lead for mission-critical, and large-scale systems.
• Deep technical expertise in Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), applied cryptography (X.509, cryptographic key lifecycles, asymmetric/symmetric algorithms), and identity/token architectures.
• Demonstrated ability to navigate cross-functional organizational dynamics, build consensus among executive leadership stakeholders, and lead geographically distributed engineering teams.

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.

Prod Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) builds and operates the foundational cryptographic and identity infrastructure that secures Google's planetary-scale production environments and sovereign cloud deployments. Every service, machine, workload, and administrative action across Google relies on our platform for cryptographically verified identity, scoped authorization, and high-assurance trust boundaries.

Our organization is structured around three sub-teams to enable our core user journeys:

• Identity: Empowers production entities to prove identity and associated security attributes, owning root-of-trust management, full-lifecycle credential issuance, and revocation infrastructure.
• Platform: Enables Google engineering teams and PKI operators to deploy and operate automated, self-service PKI stacks with minimal operational toil and sustaining cost.
• Delegation: Enables authenticated principals, distributed workloads, and autonomous AI agents to delegate scoped subsets of permissions dynamically, safely, and transparently.

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

• Define the overarching multi-year architectural blueprint across the domains to prevent technical fragmentation. Lead cross-domain design reviews, establish unified cryptographic and API design standards, and resolve complex architectural trade-offs across sub-teams.
• Author and drive the 3–5 year technical goal for production identity, anticipating industry shifts in post-quantum readiness, confidential computing, and agentic workflows. Translate enterprise-wide security mandates including Regional Security Isolation (RSI) and Cryptographic Hygiene programs into actionable, sequenced engineering roadmaps.
• Align stakeholders on priorities, shared dependencies, and architectural best practices. Guide specialized working groups to drive cross-cutting technical consistency across sub-teams.
• Partner closely with Security Leadership, Cloud Foundations, Infrasec SRE, CorpEng, and Hardware Security teams to align security boundaries and platform roadmaps.
• Lead operational excellence, multi-region fault tolerance, automated key rotations, and disaster recovery readiness across all production services.

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.