Staff Software Engineer, Infrastructure

Google•Sunnyvale, CA

13h•$207,000 - $300,000

About The Position

Google is hiring a Staff Software Engineer to define and drive the technical architecture of Google Cloud’s open-source agent platform and developer substrate. The role sets multi-quarter technical direction across developer experience, stateful agent execution, secure isolation, and ecosystem-wide interoperability. The team builds open-source, developer-first orchestration and runtime foundations for modern AI and autonomous agent workloads. It combines distributed-systems expertise and open-source leadership with applied exploration, working with frontier AI labs, framework and harness maintainers, standards foundations, and the developer community to shape standards for AI and agentic computing. The position involves building platform abstractions, APIs, and lifecycle protocols for stateful, secure, portable agent execution from laptop to cloud, while balancing developer ergonomics with enterprise governance, isolation, and hyperscale performance. Google’s AI and Infrastructure team delivers AI and infrastructure capabilities at scale, efficiency, reliability, and velocity for Googlers, Google Cloud customers, and Google users worldwide. Individual pay depends on job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. The listed US pay range is $207,000–$300,000, plus a 20% bonus target, equity, and benefits.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.
8 years of experience with software development in one or more programming languages, such as Go, Python, Rust, or C++.
5 years of experience with software design and architecture across distributed systems, developer platforms/tooling, container/virtualization runtimes, or AI/cloud infrastructure.
3 years of experience with software design and architecture.
Experience building or architecting Agentic AI platforms and infrastructure.

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree or PhD in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
8 years of experience with data structures and algorithms.
Deep architectural expertise in two or more of: agentic harnesses and runtimes, container/microVM and OS isolation, developer tooling/DX, or Kubernetes/cloud-native control planes in Go.
Recognized open-source leadership as a maintainer, creator, or specification author in CNCF, AI/agent foundations, or adopted developer tools, and comfort operating in fast-moving spaces between applied research and production engineering.
Track record of taking 0-to-1 developer platforms, open-source runtimes, CLIs/SDKs, or AI agent infrastructure from early concept to widespread adoption.

Responsibilities

Drive the multi-quarter technical architecture and roadmap for the open-source agent platform, runtime, and developer experience.
Define clean, extensible platform abstractions, APIs, and lifecycle protocols that support stateful, secure, and portable AI agent execution from laptop to cloud.
Lead technical alignment across Google Cloud, AI/ML teams, security, and external framework and lab partners to deliver cohesive end-to-end agent workflows.
Solve complex challenges balancing zero-friction developer ergonomics with enterprise governance, isolation, and hyperscale performance.
Provide technical leadership in the open-source community and standards bodies, cultivate external adoption, and mentor engineers across the team.