Staff Software Engineer, Youtube Ads Surfaces and Experiences

Google; Mountain View (CA); On-site; USD 207,000 - 301,000; Full time

Job summary

Google's software engineers build the next-generation technologies that change how billions of users connect, explore, and interact with information and one another. Our teams drive scalable systems across search, display, video, and AI platforms, with opportunities to switch projects as you and our fast-paced business grow.

In this role, you will guide long-term engineering strategy for enabling format optimizations and new AI capabilities, lead major design decisions, and help scale complex

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 8 years of software development experience.
• 7 years leading technical strategy, ML design, and ML infrastructure optimization.
• 5 years with design, architecture, testing and launching software products.
• Experience working within Ads.
• Experience with GenAI techniques (LLMs, multi-modal, large vision models).

Responsibilities

• Drive the long-term engineering strategy for enabling format optimizations and AI capabilities.
• Own key technical decisions, guiding design tradeoffs, roadmaps, system health and risk.
• Identify system hotspots and invest to remove barriers to productivity and feature throughput.
• Mentor and grow the next generation of technical leaders through coaching and scalable mentorship.
• Collaborate cross-functionally to build features consistently across surfaces, balancing platform constraints.

Skills

Software development

ML design

ML infrastructure

System architecture

Testing and launching

Ads experience

GenAI techniques

Leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree

Master's degree

PhD

Job description

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 8 years of experience in software development.
• 7 years of experience leading technical project strategy, ML design, and optimizing ML infrastructure (e.g., model deployment, model evaluation, data processing, debugging, fine tuning).
• 5 years of experience with design and architecture along with testing and launching software products.
• Experience working within Ads.
• Experience with state of the art GenAI techniques (e.g., Large Language Models (LLMs), Multi-Modal, Large Vision Models) or with GenAI-related concepts (language modeling, computer vision).

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree or PhD in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
• Experience leading full stack engineering, distributed systems teams, or quality teams, effectively leading technical strategy and scaling architecture.
• Ability to strategically anticipate and mitigate obstacles in ambiguous or rapidly shifting environments.
• Exceptional communication and collaboration skills to align agendas and strategy with cross‑functional directors and leaders.

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.

In this role, you will be responsible for driving the long-term engineering strategy for enabling format optimizations, new experiences, incorporating organizational business priorities and technological shifts, such as new AI capabilities.

You will act as a de facto authority on major systems and drive the engineering strategy for a critical technical area of great importance to YouTube Ads. Operating with excellent judgment and minimal oversight, you will uncover and address ambiguous, complex, and large-scale technical problems. Your role involves thinking strategically over long time horizons, establishing consensus across divergent teams, and driving technical and process improvements across an organization of over 100 engineers. You will need to take data driven approaches along with focusing on making our systems scalable, safer, more reliable, and highly robust.

Google Ads is helping power the open internet with the best technology that connects and creates value for people, publishers, advertisers, and Google. We’re made up of multiple teams, building Google’s Advertising products including search, display, shopping, travel and video advertising, as well as analytics. Our teams create trusted experiences between people and businesses with useful ads. We help grow businesses of all sizes from small businesses, to large brands, to YouTube creators, with effective advertiser tools that deliver measurable results. We also enable Google to engage with customers at scale.

Individual pay is determined by factors including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. US: $207,000 - $301,000 (USD) + 20% bonus target + equity + benefits

Responsibilities

• Drive the long-term engineering strategy, incorporating organizational business priorities and technological shifts, such as new AI capabilities.
• Own key technical decisions based on your expertise, guiding the team through important design tradeoffs, short term/long term strategy, system health, and risk management.
• Identify system hotspots to improve the organization's technical health, ensuring the calculated investments are made to remove widely-felt barriers to productivity/feature throughput.
• Invest in growing the next generation of technical leaders through direct coaching and scalable mentorship initiatives.
• Work cross-functionally to ensure features are built consistently across different surfaces working closely with other teams, quality, client infrastructure teams while balancing specific platform constraints to make decisions that are best for the business overall.

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.