Staff Software Engineer, Reef Intent Engine

Google LLC; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 207,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

20% bonus target

Equity

Benefits

Job summary

Google LLC in the United States is seeking a senior software engineer to design, build, and operate large-scale distributed systems with a focus on reliability and AI/ML workloads. You will work on projects critical to Google’s needs, with opportunities to switch teams as the business grows.

Join the Hybrid Cloud Environment and Core teams to empower frontier AI efforts, shape cloud-native platforms, and advance secure, scalable infrastructure across multi-organization environments.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 8 years of experience designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems with focus on scalability, fault tolerance, and reliability.
• Experience designing software architecture for applications, including AI/ML systems.
• Experience in cloud computing with a focus on AI/ML, data analytics, or data engineering.
• Experience maintaining technical infrastructure for computing environments supporting AI/ML workloads.
• Experience with cloud-native architecture and development methodologies (e.g., modernizing legacy applications, application performance profiling and tuning, container technology).

Responsibilities

• Translate high-level developer and agent intent into deterministic, verifiable environments.
• Architect fleet-wide drift detection, formal policy verification, and autonomous IAM/security remediation agents across Alphabet's multi-organization footprint.

Skills

Distributed systems design

Large-scale architecture

AI/ML systems experience

Cloud computing

Infrastructure for AI/ML workloads

Container technologies

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

GCP

Kubernetes

Job description

Minimum qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.


• 8 years of experience designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems, with a focus on scalability, fault tolerance, and reliability.


• Experience designing software architecture for applications, including AI/ML systems.


• Experience in cloud computing, with a focus on AI/ML, data analytics, or data engineering.


• Experience maintaining technical infrastructure for computing environments supporting AI/ML workloads.


• Experience with cloud-native architecture and development methodologies (e.g., modernizing legacy applications, application performance profiling and tuning, container technology).

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience building AI agent harnesses, MCP servers, LLM evaluation pipelines, or neuro-symbolic systems that verify agent infrastructure actions.


• Experience with cloud security governance, autonomous remediation, IAM policy automation, VPC Service Controls, OPA, and asset drift detection.


• Experience designing large-scale Cloud FinOps, billing attribution, or automated capacity and waste reclamation systems.


• Experience with Google Cloud Platform resource management, multi-organization hierarchies, cloud billing, IAM, VPC-SC, and internal production infrastructure.


• Experience converging fragmented internal tooling into cohesive, cloud-native developer platforms.

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.

The Hybrid Cloud Environment team's mission is to empower Googlers and AI agents to build faster, safer, and more efficiently on Google Cloud. We develop and operate Reef, Alphabet's unified, cloud-native development platform. Reef abstracts the complexities of infrastructure, security, and financial management, enabling users—from human developers to autonomous coding agents in Gemini—to go from high-level intent to a running, production-ready, and compliant Google Cloud environment in minutes. You will directly empower frontier AI teams like Google DeepMind and Gemini to build cloud-native applications with startup agility.

The Core team builds the technical foundation behind Google’s flagship products. We are owners and advocates for the underlying design elements, developer platforms, product components, and infrastructure at Google. These are the essential building blocks for excellent, safe, and coherent experiences for our users and drive the pace of innovation for every developer. We look across Google’s products to build central solutions, break down technical barriers and strengthen existing systems. As the Core team, we have a mandate and a unique opportunity to impact important technical decisions across the company.

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

• Translate high-level developer and agent intent into deterministic, verifiable environments.


• Architect fleet-wide drift detection, formal policy verification, and autonomous IAM/security remediation agents across Alphabet's multi-organization footprint.


• Design unified policy and budget decorators so greenfield environments are safe-by-default and cost-governed at creation without manual reviews.


• Build high-scale TrueCost billing attribution, epistemic environment TTL enforcement, and automated brownfield waste reclamation.


• Build evaluation harnesses to benchmark agentic infrastructure actuation. Mentor engineers and align technical roadmaps.

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Google is proud to be an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer.

We are committed to building a workforce that is representative of the users we serve, creating a culture of belonging, and providing an equal employment opportunity regardless of race, creed, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition (including breastfeeding), expecting or parents-to-be, criminal histories consistent with legal requirements, or any other basis protected by law.

See also Google’s EEO Policy, Know your rights: workplace discrimination is illegal, Belonging at Google, and How we hire.

If you have a need that requires accommodation, please let us know by completing our Accommodations for Applicants form.

Google is a global company and, in order to facilitate efficient collaboration and communication globally, English proficiency is a requirement for all roles unless stated otherwise in the job posting.

Equity is granted exclusively and discretionarily by Alphabet Inc. on the basis of an agreement concluded between you and Alphabet Inc. Alphabet Inc. is your sole contractual partner with respect to equity grants. GSU grants are not guaranteed, are discretionary, are subject to approval by the Alphabet Inc. board of directors or its delegate, the terms of the relevant Alphabet Inc. stock plan, and your grant agreement. They have no impact on statutory payments. Current or past grants do not confer an acquired right.