Senior Staff Software Engineer, Production PKIS

Google•Kirkland, WA

12d•$262,000 - $364,000

About The Position

Google software engineers develop technologies used by billions of people and work on projects critical to Google’s needs. Engineers are expected to bring leadership, versatility, and enthusiasm for solving new problems across the full stack. Prod Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) builds and operates cryptographic and identity infrastructure for Google’s production environments and sovereign cloud deployments. The platform provides cryptographically verified identity, scoped authorization, and high-assurance trust boundaries for services, machines, workloads, and administrative actions. Its three sub-teams are Identity, which manages root-of-trust, credential issuance, and revocation; Platform, which enables automated, self-service PKI deployment and operations; and Delegation, which enables authenticated principals, workloads, and AI agents to delegate scoped permissions. The Senior Staff Software Engineer will set the multi-year architecture and technical direction across these domains, establish shared standards, align stakeholders and partner teams, and lead operational excellence for production services. The role’s work includes planning for post-quantum readiness, confidential computing, and agentic workflows, as well as translating security mandates into engineering roadmaps. Google Cloud provides enterprise-grade solutions and tools to customers in more than 200 countries and territories. Individual pay is based on factors including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. The US salary range is $262,000–$364,000, with a 25% bonus target, equity, and benefits.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.
8 years of experience programming in C++.
5 years of experience with design and architecture, and testing and launching software products.

Nice To Haves

Experience setting multi-team technical strategy or acting as a Lead Architect or Tech Lead for mission-critical, large-scale systems.
Deep technical expertise in Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), applied cryptography (including X.509, cryptographic key lifecycles, and asymmetric and 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.

Responsibilities

Define the multi-year architectural blueprint across domains, 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 post-quantum readiness, confidential computing, and agentic workflows.
Translate enterprise-wide security mandates, including Regional Security Isolation (RSI) and Cryptographic Hygiene programs, into sequenced engineering roadmaps.
Align stakeholders on priorities, shared dependencies, and architectural best practices; guide working groups to establish cross-sub-team technical consistency.
Partner 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 production services.