Senior Staff Software Engineer, Audio Systems, XR

About the role

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Acoustics, Mechanical

Engineering (Acoustics focus), Computer Science, or equivalent practical

experience.

• 8 years of industry experience in audio systems engineering, acoustics,

physical acoustic design, audio system tuning, or digital signal processing

for consumer electronics or wearable devices.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Master’s degree or PhD in Acoustics, Electrical Engineering, Audio Signal

Processing, or Psychoacoustics.

• Demonstrated experience in acoustic tuning of both playback (EQ, MBDRC,

speaker protection, loudness optimization) and capture (AEC, beamforming,

noise suppression) production pipelines.

• Proven track record of architecting, tuning, and shipping audio systems for

high-volume commercial wearable products (e.g., smart glasses, AR/VR

headsets, TWS earbuds, smart speakers, or hearables).

• Deep expertise in physical micro-acoustics: acoustic cavity design, porting,

acoustic mesh impedance, transducer characterization, and lumped-element/FEA

acoustic modeling.

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.

With your technical expertise you will manage project priorities, deadlines, and

deliverables. You will design, develop, test, deploy, maintain, and enhance

software solutions.

As the Audio System Engineering Lead, you will serve as the systems architect

for acoustics, hardware co-design, and audio tuning across Google's smart

glasses and XR wearable portfolio. You will own end-to-end audio quality, both

capture and playback, across all operational modes and product form factors.

You will bridge the gap between physical acoustics, embedded DSP software, and

machine-learning-driven speech enhancement. You will navigate high ambiguity,

define technical roadmaps, establish acoustic tuning methodologies, and align

multi-disciplinary engineering teams. This position requires in-person

interviews as part of the hiring process.

For decades, the computing revolution has reshaped our world driven by

breakthroughs in compute, connectivity, mobile, and now, AI. Google's XR team is

at the forefront of the next major leap – the convergence of AI and XR. This is

more than just new devices – it's about reimagining how we interact with the

world around us. We're building a future where lightweight XR devices like smart

glasses and headsets pair with helpful AI to augment human intelligence,

offering personalized, conversational, and contextually aware

experiences.Individual pay is determined by factors including job-related

skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

US: $262000 - $364000 (USD) + 25% bonus target + equity + benefits

Learn more about benefits at Google

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

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Partner with physical hardware teams to evaluate and select microphones,

speakers, amplifiers and optimize microphone array placement/orientation and

acoustic chambers under severe spatial constraints.

• Lead and guide the tuning engineering team to define KPIs and optimize

playback (DEQ, MBDRC, speaker limiters) and capture (AEC, beamforming, neural

wind noise reduction, VAD/AIT) signal processing blocks on

resource-constrained embedded architectures.

• Take ultimate accountability for overall audio quality across all XR glasses

form factors. Establish standardized quality metrics and audio tuning

practices.

• Own and drive the long-term technical roadmap and strategy for XR audio

systems. Decompose ambiguous, highly complex audio challenges into

structured, multi-team projects.

• Evaluate, select, and manage key components and IP vendors. Drive the

integration of advanced audio algorithms (e.g., Acoustic Echo Cancellation,

spatial audio, noise suppression) utilizing both in-house research and

external vendor technologies.