Join a dynamic team at the forefront of Google's next-generation technologies, shaping how billions interact with information. Our Core Data team is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to drive innovation in Knowledge Catalog, focusing on core search infrastructure and quality frameworks. You will contribute to systems handling massive scale, pushing the boundaries of distributed computing, AI, and large-scale system design.

This role offers the unique opportunity to impact critical technical decisions across Google. You'll work on projects vital to Google's mission, with the flexibility to explore diverse challenges and contribute to our rapidly evolving business needs. We value versatility, leadership, and a passion for tackling complex problems across the full software development lifecycle.

As a key member of the Knowledge Catalog team, you will lead the technical strategy, architecture, and roadmap for our hybrid semantic search infrastructure and search quality evaluation platform.

You will architect scalable, low-latency distributed systems designed to meet stringent sub-second latency Service Level Agreements for various search use cases. Your work will involve building robust search infrastructure for both human and agentic workflows, fostering engineering excellence, and ensuring the reliability of our search serving and indexing pipelines.

Furthermore, you will mentor and develop fellow Individual Contributors, helping to establish the Bengaluru site as a center of excellence for search infrastructure and quality.

We are looking for candidates with a minimum of 8 years of experience in software development and 5 years focused on testing and launching software products. A solid understanding of distributed databases and large-scale distributed systems is essential.

Experience architecting high-throughput, low-latency search back-ends, indexing pipelines, or information retrieval (IR) platforms is highly desired.

Preferred qualifications include a Master's degree or PhD in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field, along with 3 years of technical leadership experience, such as a Tech Lead or Staff Engineer, guiding architectural roadmaps, system design, and cross-team collaborations.