Staff Software Engineer, Backend Infrastructure and Rapid Prototyping, Google Labs

Role Overview

At Google Labs, we incubate early-stage technologies that define the future of computing and AI. We operate as small, autonomous, product-driven teams that move with startup speed, take bold technical bets, and build breakthrough user experiences. Within Labs, the Language Applications organization builds foundational platforms and consumer products, including NotebookLM, Google AI Studio, and the Gemini API.

Our focus is pushing the frontier of synthetic media—audio, video, dynamic code, and interactive visual artifacts. We build the foundational systems that turn generative models into instant, intuitive, and reliable experiences for millions of creators, researchers, and knowledge workers worldwide.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test, deploy, maintain, and enhance large-scale software solutions and resilient distributed backend infrastructure.
• Provide technical leadership on generative media projects, managing project priorities, deadlines, and architectural deliverables.
• Facilitate alignment and clarity across teams on goals, outcomes, and timelines, while influencing and coaching a distributed team of engineers.
• Lead the design and implementation of solutions in specialized ML areas, optimize ML infrastructure, and guide model optimization and data processing strategies.
• Prototype innovative cross-stack features and clean APIs that bridge core multimodal generation pipelines with interactive user interfaces.

Requirements & Qualifications

Minimum qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, or equivalent practical experience.
• 8 years of experience in software development.
• 5 years of experience testing and launching software products, and 3 years of experience with software design and architecture.
• 5 years of experience with speech/audio, reinforcement learning, ML infrastructure, or another specialized ML field.
• 5 years of experience leading ML design, optimizing end-to-end ML (deployment, evaluation, tuning), and integrating generative AI tools or Large Language Model (LLM) interfaces.

Preferred qualifications:

• Master’s degree or PhD in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
• 8 years of experience with advanced data structures and algorithms.
• 3 years of experience in a technical leadership role leading project teams and setting technical direction.
• 3 years of experience working in a complex, matrixed organization involving cross-functional or cross-business projects.
• Experience building distributed queueing infrastructure or rapidly prototyping cross-stack generative AI applications.

Application Instructions

Apply directly on Google Careers at Staff Software Engineer, Backend Infrastructure and Rapid Prototyping, Google Labs↗.

Direct application sign-in: Submit Application↗

Note: In most instances, this position requires in-person interviews as part of the hiring process.