Senior Staff Software Engineer, Google Compute Engine (Guest Ecosystem)

About the role

The Guest Platform team enhances Google Cloud’s customer experience by simplifying agent deployment for SAP and AI/ML workloads via Virtual Machine (VM) Extensions. The Guest Ecosystem is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer to unify its three core pillars—ContainerOS (COS), Guest OS, and Guest Platform—into a single product surface.

Responsibilities

• Define the technical goal and roadmap for the Operating System image portfolio.
• Align with organizational goals to support first-party/third-party customer needs, focusing on versioning, hardening, optimization, and platform integration.
• Establish testing frameworks to deliver out-of-the-box, qualified images across compute families.
• Monitor reliability via service level objective (SLOs), robust validation (security, compatibility), and incident management.
• Harden Operating System images, drive regular vulnerability scanning, and ensure timely patching to mitigate emerging threats.
• Partner with NPI teams to ensure Day-0 GCE compatibility and continuous validation on next-generation CPUs, TPUs, and GPUs.
• Collaborate with operating system vendors and open-source communities.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field or equivalent practical experience.
• 8 years of experience with software development in one or more general purpose programming languages.
• Experience building and developing large-scale infrastructure or distributed systems.
• Experience within a quota-carrying team, such as people management, team lead, mentorship or coaching.
• Experience leading cross-functional projects.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree or PhD in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
• Experience with high availability systems and production systems.
• Experience with Linux Internals, Kernel, and Virtualization.
• Ability to work in ambiguous, fast-changing environments.

Skills

• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• Experience with cloud platforms and virtual machine extensions.
• Knowledge of containerization and orchestration tools.
• Experience with DevOps practices and tools.

Benefits

• 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.

Pay

US: $262000 - $365000 (USD) + 25% bonus target + equity + benefits