Staff Software Engineer, Infrastructure

Google; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 207,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

Google is seeking software engineers to join the Mountain View team, focusing on the Photos Backup Backend. You will help build backend infrastructure, sync services, and partner integration platforms powering media backup for billions of users across Google Photos and OEM partners.

We expect you to set a multi-year technical vision, design high-throughput services, and collaborate across Product, Security, UX, and partner teams while mentoring peers to elevate engineering standards.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 8 years of experience programming in C++.
• 5 years of experience testing and launching software products.
• 5 years of experience building and developing large-scale infrastructure, distributed systems or networks, or experience with compute technologies, storage, or hardware architecture.
• 3 years of experience with software design and architecture.

Responsibilities

• Set multi-year technical vision, architectural roadmap, and engineering strategy for backend backup infrastructure and partner integrations.
• Architect and build resilient, high-throughput, low-latency backend services, sync protocols, and ingestion pipelines for high media traffic.
• Partner cross-functionally across Product, Business Development, Partner Engineering, Mobile/Client, User Experience (UX), and Security/Privacy.
• Establish operational excellence, monitoring, Service Level Objectives/Agreements (SLOs/SLAs), and automated failover/disaster recovery.
• Mentor engineers, conduct code and design reviews, and drive engineering best practices.

Skills

C++ programming

Distributed systems

Software design & architecture

Testing & deployment

Backend services

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience

Tools

gRPC

Job description

Minimum qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 8 years of experience programming in C++.
• 5 years of experience testing and launching software products.
• 5 years of experience building and developing large-scale infrastructure, distributed systems or networks, or experience with compute technologies, storage, or hardware architecture.
• 3 years of experience with software design and architecture.

Preferred qualifications:

• Master’s degree or PhD in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
• 3 years of experience in a technical leadership role leading project teams and setting technical direction.
• Experience developing asynchronous, high-QPS backend microservices and remote procedure call (RPC) frameworks (e.g., gRPC).
• Experience in scalable database schema design (e.g., interleaved tables, secondary indexes, query optimization) and high-contention transactions.
• Experience collaborating with client teams or external Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) technical partners.

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.

At Google Photos, our mission is to be the home for your life's content, safely stored and deeply understood, so your personal AI can help you thrive. As a part of the Photos Backup Backend team in Mountain View, you will build the backend infrastructure, sync services, and partner integration platforms that power media backup for billions of users across Google Photos and major Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) partners. 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: $207000 - $300000 (USD) + 20% bonus target + equity + benefits

Learn more about benefits at Google.

Responsibilities

• Set multi-year technical vision, architectural roadmap, and engineering strategy for backend backup infrastructure and partner integrations.
• Architect and build resilient, high-throughput, low-latency backend services, sync protocols, and ingestion pipelines for high media traffic.
• Partner cross-functionally across Product, Business Development, Partner Engineering, Mobile/Client, User Experience (UX), and Security/Privacy.
• Establish operational excellence, monitoring, Service Level Objectives/Agreements (Service Level Objective (SLOs)/Service Level Agreement (SLAs), and automated failover/disaster recovery.
• Mentor engineers, conduct code and design reviews, and drive engineering best practices.

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