Principal Engineer, Data and Retrieval for AI, Core
GoogleNote: By applying to this position you will have an opportunity to share your preferred working location from the following: Sunnyvale, CA, USA; New York, NY, USA; San Francisco, CA, USA.
Minimum qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, a similar technical field, or equivalent practical experience
- 15 years of professional software engineering experience
- Experience with technical innovation with one or more of the relevant domains (AI/ML, distributed systems, information retrieval, resource optimization)
- Experience developing ML models and infrastructure
Preferred qualifications:
- Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a similar technical field
- 20 years of professional software engineering experience, or 15 years with an advanced degree
- Experience with cross-organizational collaboration and influencing other teams' directions and road maps
- Strong organization, prioritization, and written and verbal communication skills
- Thought leadership skills to identify and design problems that commensurate with principal engineer scope and difficulty
- A proven track record of delivering successfully within timelines and a desire to solve engineering problems
About the job
Core Data is responsible for data at Google, working closely with teams across the company to serve their data needs. The Core Data product suite offers end-to-end data management solutions, infrastructure, and foundations for Google products operating at planet-scale, including flagship products such as Gemini, Search, Ads, YouTube, and Geo. As the Principal Engineer you will play a vital role at Google by providing essential technical oversight over Core IR’s data enrichment, indexing, and serving systems. The stack powers traditional applications like Google Search and more recently, is being used to build the web & media datasets used to train GDM’s largest and most sophisticated models. In this role, you will play a significant role in evolving IR’s data enrichment capabilities, as well as the IR stack more broadly, towards supporting AI training data applications as a top priority. Recognized as a leading expert in large data processing systems, this role guides technical decision-making for multiple global/regional teams. Their expertise also contributes to shaping the long-term direction and strategy for numerous product areas/functions, including Search and GDM.
The Core team builds the technical foundation behind Google’s flagship products. We are owners and advocates for the underlying design elements, developer platforms, product components, and infrastructure at Google. These are the essential building blocks for excellent, safe, and coherent experiences for our users and drive the pace of innovation for every developer. We look across Google’s products to build central solutions, break down technical barriers and strengthen existing systems. As the Core team, we have a mandate and a unique opportunity to impact important technical decisions across the company.
The US base salary range for this full-time position is $294,000-$414,000 + bonus + equity + benefits. Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Within the range, individual pay is determined by work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during the hiring process.
Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only, and do not include bonus, equity, or benefits. Learn more about benefits at Google.
Responsibilities
- Evolve the IR stack to support building datasets and platforms for AI training applications in GDM (Gemini, GenMedia, etc.) as a primary use case.
- Lead the evolution of IR infrastructure toward improved usability, reliability, scalability, efficiency, architectural clarity, and coherence with a focus on AI model development journeys.
- Mentor and grow IR tech leads, with a particular focus on improving and maintaining system sustainability in an era of quick delivery and bias to action.
- Work across Data, Core, and Google product areas to help define and ensure that IR systems support an AI-driven future.
- Work with product management and customer engagement teams to ensure that IR infrastructure supports current and future customer needs, working toward the future state as much as possible given the current vantage point.