Staff Software Engineer, Reef Intent Engine

Google

San Jose, California, United States · New York, New York, United States · Kirkland, Washington, United StatesFull-time$207,000–$300,000Posted Oct 16, 2026

About the role

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:

  • Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
  • 8 years of experience designing, building, and operating large-scale

distributed systems, with a focus on scalability, fault tolerance, and

reliability.

  • Experience designing software architecture for applications, including AI/ML

systems.

  • Experience in cloud computing, with a focus on AI/ML, data analytics, or data

engineering.

  • Experience maintaining technical infrastructure for computing environments

supporting AI/ML workloads.

  • Experience with cloud-native architecture and development methodologies

(e.g., modernizing legacy applications, application performance profiling and

tuning, container technology).

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:

  • Experience building AI agent harnesses, MCP servers, LLM evaluation

pipelines, or neuro-symbolic systems that verify agent infrastructure

actions.

  • Experience with cloud security governance, autonomous remediation, IAM policy

automation, VPC Service Controls, OPA, and asset drift detection.

  • Experience designing large-scale Cloud FinOps, billing attribution, or

automated capacity and waste reclamation systems.

  • Experience with Google Cloud Platform resource management, multi-organization

hierarchies, cloud billing, IAM, VPC-SC, and internal production

infrastructure.

  • Experience converging fragmented internal tooling into cohesive, cloud-native

developer platforms.

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 Hybrid Cloud Environment team's mission is to empower Googlers and AI agents

to build faster, safer, and more efficiently on Google Cloud. We develop and

operate Reef, Alphabet's unified, cloud-native development platform. Reef

abstracts the complexities of infrastructure, security, and financial

management, enabling users—from human developers to autonomous coding agents in

Gemini—to go from high-level intent to a running, production-ready, and

compliant Google Cloud environment in minutes. You will directly empower

frontier AI teams like Google DeepMind and Gemini to build cloud-native

applications with startup agility.

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.

Individual pay is determined by factors including job-related skills,

experience, and relevant education or training.

US: $207000 - $300000 (USD) + 20% bonus target + equity + benefits

Learn more about benefits at Google

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

RESPONSIBILITIES:

  • Translate high-level developer and agent intent into deterministic,

verifiable environments.

  • Architect fleet-wide drift detection, formal policy verification, and

autonomous IAM/security remediation agents across Alphabet's

multi-organization footprint.

  • Design unified policy and budget decorators so greenfield environments are

safe-by-default and cost-governed at creation without manual reviews.

  • Build high-scale TrueCost billing attribution, ephemeral environment TTL

enforcement, and automated brownfield waste reclamation.

  • Build evaluation harnesses to benchmark agentic infrastructure actuation.

Mentor engineers and align technical roadmaps.

Responsibilities

  • Translate developer and agent intent into deterministic, verifiable cloud environments.
  • Architect fleet-wide drift detection, policy verification, and autonomous IAM and security remediation.
  • Build policy and budget controls for safe, cost-governed environments.
  • Develop billing attribution, environment TTL enforcement, and automated waste reclamation.
  • Create evaluation harnesses for agentic infrastructure and mentor engineers while aligning technical roadmaps.

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
  • 8 years of experience designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems.
  • Experience with software architecture for applications, including AI/ML systems.
  • Experience with cloud computing, AI/ML or data workloads, and infrastructure supporting those workloads.
  • Experience with cloud-native development, application modernization, performance tuning, and container technology.
  • Preferred experience with AI agent infrastructure, LLM evaluation, cloud security governance, FinOps, Google Cloud resource management, and developer platforms.

Benefits

  • 20% bonus target
  • Equity
  • Benefits

Skills mentioned

System DesignDistributed SystemsGoogle CloudCloud ComputingAI AgentsModel Context ProtocolIdentity and Access ManagementCloud SecurityInfrastructure as CodeContainerization

About Google

A problem isn't truly solved until it's solved for all. Googlers build products that help create opportunities for everyone, whether down the street or across the globe. Bring your insight, imagination and a healthy disregard for the impossible. Bring everything that makes you unique. Together, we can build for everyone. Check out our career opportunities at goo.gle/3DLEokh

Software Development10,001+ employeesMountain View, CA

H-1B sponsorship history

Historical employer filing data was found for Google. The employer record includes 57,181 historical certified applications. This is employer-level history, not a guarantee that this role currently offers sponsorship.