Senior Software Engineer, Device Architecture, Google Home

About the role

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical

Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

• 5 years of experience in embedded systems, OS internals, or system

architecture.

• 5 years of experience in embedded systems, OS internals, SoC architecture,

Linux or RTOS subsystems, device drivers, board bring-up, and low-level

system services.

• 5 years of experience in C/C++.
• Experience driving technical requirements, evaluations, and prototyping with

silicon and third-party software vendors.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Master’s Degree or PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or

Electrical Engineering.

• 5 years of experience with data structures and algorithms.
• Design experience with consumer hardware SoC architectures (MCU/CPU/DSP/NPU

coordination).

• Proficiency in system profiling and tracing tools (e.g., Perfetto, ftrace) to

analyze and resolve complex performance bottlenecks.

ABOUT THE JOB:

Google's software engineers develop the next-generation technologies that change

how billions of users connect, explore, and interact with information and one

another. Our products need to handle information at massive scale, and extend

well beyond web search. We're looking for engineers who bring fresh ideas from

all areas, including information retrieval, distributed computing, large-scale

system design, networking and data storage, security, artificial intelligence,

natural language processing, UI design and mobile; the list goes on and is

growing every day. As a software engineer, you will work on a specific project

critical to Google’s needs with opportunities to switch teams and projects as

you and our fast-paced business grow and evolve. We need our engineers to be

versatile, display leadership qualities and be enthusiastic to take on new

problems across the full-stack as we continue to push technology forward.

The System Architecture team within Google Home defines and validates the

foundational software architecture across first-party (1P) and partner smart

home devices. We manage hard constraints at the boundary of silicon

capabilities, embedded operating system (OS) layers, and real-time processing

pipelines.

The Google Home team focuses on hardware, software and services offerings for

the home, ranging from thermostats to smart displays. The Home team researches,

designs, and develops new technologies and hardware to make users’ homes more

helpful. Our mission is the helpful home: to create a home that cares for the

people inside it and the world around it.Individual pay is determined by factors

including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

US: $174000 - $252000 (USD) + 15% bonus target + equity + benefits

Learn more about benefits at Google

[https://www.google.com/about/careers/applications/benefits/].

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Lead architecture pathfinding, exploratory investigations, and

proof-of-concept (PoC) software implementations to evaluate features and

silicon architectures.

• Drive technical engagements and prototyping sprints with external SoC vendors

and business partners, evaluating vendor reference software and steering

roadmap alignments.

• Profile, diagnose, and optimize system-level resource

utilization—specifically targeting DRAM/Flash footprint reduction, CPU load

optimization, and end-to-end latency.

• Optimize embedded pipelines for real-time audio/video processing and

on-device ML execution, identifying execution bottlenecks across CPU/GPU/NPU

subsystems.

• Formulate architectural blueprints and trade-off analyses to influence

internal cross-functional teams (hardware, platform software, Product

Management) and external vendor engineering teams.