Software Engineer III, Infrastructure, Spanner OA and Disaggregation

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.

Spanner is Google’s primary transactional data store, supporting SQL queries and scaling to a billion operations per second globally. The Spanner OA and Disaggregation team is responsible for scaling Spanner to manage demanding new read loads, supporting growth into Hybrid Transaction/Analytical Processing (HTAP) and safe agentic access to transactional data.

In this role, you will help build service-based data access methods that are isolated from the core transactional engine. By enabling reads and queries to scale separately, your work will reduce storage and processing costs and unlock new consistent-access use cases for major product areas across Google and Google Cloud.

Individual pay is determined by factors including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

US: $147000 - $210000 (USD) + 15% bonus target + equity + benefits

Learn more about benefits at Google.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement C++ solutions to solve complex algorithmic issues related to data structures, storage I/O, concurrent programming, and SQL.
• Develop isolated data access methods that enable high-performance investigative query processing to scale separately from Spanner's transactional engine.
• Troubleshoot, analyze, and optimize a massive-scale distributed stateful system to ensure strict correctness, availability, and resource efficiency.
• Leverage AI and LLM-based engineering tools to accelerate coding, reviewing, testing, and debugging workflows while retaining ownership of the outcomes.
• Collaborate closely with major Spanner infrastructure and Cloud customers (e.g., Search, Ads, YouTube, Gemini) to gather business requirements and deliver scalable database features.

Minimum qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.
  
• 2 years of experience with software development using C++.
• 2 years of experience designing, building, or maintaining distributed systems or large-scale computing infrastructure.
• Experience with performance analysis, troubleshooting, and debugging software systems.

Preferred qualifications:

• Master's degree or PhD in Computer Science or related technical field.
  
• Experience engineering distributed databases, storage systems, or database internals.
• Experience analyzing complex distributed systems and troubleshooting performance issues based on logs, events, and metrics.
• Fluency in utilizing AI/LLM tools for software engineering workflows (e.g., automated coding, reviewing, and design).
• Background in large-scale cloud computing and a track record of collaborating with customers on feature development.

In most instances, this position requires in-person interviews as part of the hiring process.