Tech Lead, BigQuery Multimodal Strategy and Architecture

Google; Kirkland (WA); On-site; USD 174,000 - 252,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

Life insurance

Disability insurance

401(k) with company match

Paid time off

Sick time 40 hours/year (Seattle 69)

Maternity leave 28–30 weeks

Baby bonding leave 18 weeks

13 paid holidays

Job summary

Google is seeking a Tech Lead for BigQuery's file formats to define strategy, architecture, and adoption of next-generation formats.

You will drive end-to-end design for storage formats, collaborate with multiple teams, and influence data infrastructure for AI training and multimodal workloads.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related technical field or equivalent practical experience.
• 5 years of experience in software development, with experience in C++ or Go.
• 3 years of experience designing and optimizing distributed systems, storage architectures, or database internals.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end technical strategy for BigQuery's storage formats and roadmap for Capacitor vs emerging open standards.
• Design storage layer innovations for zero-copy updates, fast random access, and integration with deep learning pipelines.
• Collaborate with Dremel, BigLake, and GCS teams to ensure smooth adoption of new formats without hurting SQL concurrency.
• Position Google as a thought leader in open data lakehouse ecosystems and guide future formats.
• Lead ROI evaluations of open-source formats and integration with Arrow-native execution for wide tables and multimodal AI.

Skills

C++

Go

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related technical field

Equivalent practical experience

Tools

Capacitor format

Vortex format

Lance format

BtrBlocks

Arrow

Parquet

Iceberg

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

Minimum qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5 years of experience in software development, with experience in C++ or Go.
• 3 years of experience designing and optimizing distributed systems, storage architectures, or database internals (columnar storage formats, serialization, or query execution engines).

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience with next-generation or specialized file formats like Vortex, Lance, Nimble, or FastLanes.
• Experience with vector search (ANN) and building storage layers optimized for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and multimodal data.
• Strong understanding of modern machine learning data pipelines, including how PyTorch/TensorFlow consume data and the I/O bottlenecks of AI training.
• History of successful contributions to major open-source data projects (e.g., Apache Arrow, Parquet, Iceberg).

About the job

BigQuery is at a pivotal moment in the evolution of cloud data warehouses. The industry is seeing a massive shift in file format momentum—with next-generation columnar formats like Vortex redefining core analytics performance, and multimodal formats like Lance pulling data gravity toward AI/ML training and vector search workloads.

We are seeking a visionary Tech Lead to own the goal, strategy, and architectural design for BigQuery’s file format. In this role, you will define how BigQuery adapts to these industry shifts, whether by evolving our native Capacitor format, adopting and extending open-source standards like Vortex, or bridging the gap to AI-native lakehouses.

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: $174000 - $252000 (USD) + 15% bonus target + equity + benefits

Responsibilities

Learn more about benefits at Google.

• Own the end-to-end technical strategy for BigQuery's storage formats. Determine the roadmap for our existing proprietary formats (Capacitor) versus adopting or contributing to emerging open standards (Vortex, Lance, BtrBlocks).
• Design storage layer innovations that unlock zero-copy column updates/additions, extremely efficient random access, and seamless integration with deep learning training pipelines.
• Partner with Dremel, BigLake, and GCS teams to ensure our execution engine seamlessly adopts next-generation formats without regressing SQL concurrency.
• Position Google as a thought leader in the open data lakehouse ecosystem, steering the direction of the formats that will define the next decade of data infrastructure.
• Lead technical and ROI evaluations of open-source formats. Determine engineering costs to integrate Arrow-native execution with BigQuery pipelines for wide tables and multimodal AI.

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.