Engineering Leader, Google COE
About the role
Please visit Fractal | Intelligence for Imagination
Role Overview
Engineering Lead
Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
First-Party (1P) Engineering Ecosystem
.
This role goes beyond solution architecture. The ideal candidate will be a hands-on technical leader capable of driving architecture, engineering execution, delivery governance, reliability, and innovation across large-scale enterprise programs. You will serve as the technical authority for clients while mentoring engineering teams and ensuring delivery excellence.
The ideal candidate will have:
- 10+ years of software engineering and distributed systems experience.
- Strong hands-on expertise building large-scale platforms using GCP.
- Prior Google experience or substantial exposure to Google's 1P ecosystem.
- Experience leading teams as a Technical Lead (TL) or Engineering Lead.
- Deep understanding of distributed systems, data platforms, AI/ML systems, and cloud-native architectures.
- Proven ability to bridge technical strategy with hands-on execution.
Technical Architecture & Vision
- Define long-term technology roadmaps aligned with business objectives.
- Lead architecture and design for data, analytics, AI/ML, and platform engineering initiatives.
- Design scalable and resilient systems leveraging: • BigQuery
- Vertex AI
- Dataflow
- Dataproc
- Cloud Composer
- Event-driven and microservices architectures
- Drive engineering standards, code quality, platform governance, and architectural consistency.
- Make critical technology decisions considering scalability, reliability, maintainability, and cost efficiency.
- Translate business requirements into technical specifications and executable engineering plans.
First-Party Google Engineering Expertise
Compute, Serving & Deployment
- Strong understanding of
Borg
and large-scale cluster orchestration principles.
- Experience with Google's service deployment ecosystem including
Boq
, Pods, and microservice-based architectures.
- Knowledge of capacity planning, resource management, rollout strategies, and production deployment processes.
Storage & Data Infrastructure
- Experience designing systems leveraging: •
Spanner
Colossus (CNS)
Placer
- Understanding of data consistency, replication, distributed transactions, and geo-distributed storage systems.
Development Ecosystem
- Deep familiarity with: •
google3
CitC (Clients in the Cloud)
- Monorepo development practices
- Experience managing complex dependency structures and large-scale codebases.
- Strong working knowledge of: •
Blaze
- BUILD files
- Dependency management
- Build optimization
Engineering Excellence
- Experience with Google's: • Code review culture
•
Critique
Readability
standards
- Ability to establish engineering excellence through code quality, testing, and design reviews.
- Serve as the technical quality bar for the program.
Observability & Reliability
- Experience with reliability engineering practices.
- Familiarity with: •
Monarch
Dapper
- Production monitoring
- Distributed tracing
- Service health management
AI-Assisted Engineering
- Familiarity with Google internal AI development tooling and developer productivity systems.
- Experience using AI-assisted development practices to improve engineering velocity and quality.
- Exposure to tools such as
JetSki
Delivery Leadership
- Own end-to-end delivery of strategic client programs.
- Ensure successful execution across architecture, engineering, testing, deployment, and production support.
- Lead distributed teams across multiple geographies.
- Drive governance, risk mitigation, dependency management, and stakeholder communication.
- Step into hands-on engineering during critical program phases when necessary.
- Balance short-term delivery goals with long-term platform sustainability.
Client Leadership
- Serve as trusted technical advisor to senior client stakeholders.
- Lead architecture reviews, strategy discussions, and executive presentations.
- Translate complex technical concepts for both engineering and business audiences.
- Identify opportunities to drive innovation and business impact through technology.
Technical Leadership & Team Development
Technical Vision
- Convert ambiguous business problems into executable technical solutions.
- Create clear engineering roadmaps and architectural direction.
Team Enablement
- Identify roadblocks before they impact delivery.
- Manage dependencies across engineering, product, security, infrastructure, and platform teams.
- Drive alignment and execution across multiple stakeholders.
Mentorship & Talent Development
- Mentor engineers and technical leads.
- Delegate effectively while maintaining accountability.
- Foster a culture of technical excellence, learning, and innovation.
- Help engineers grow through coaching, design reviews, and stretch opportunities.
Engineering Experience
- 10+ years of software engineering, data engineering, or platform engineering experience.
- Proven leadership as an Engineering Lead, Technical Lead, Staff Engineer, or Principal Engineer.
- Experience delivering enterprise-scale distributed systems.
Google Cloud Expertise
Hands-on expertise with:
- BigQuery
- Dataflow
- Vertex AI
- Dataproc
- Cloud Composer
- GKE
- Cloud Run
- Serverless technologies
Programming
Strong proficiency in:
- Python
- Go
Data Systems
Experience with:
- SQL
- PLX
- Dremel
- Spanner
- Distributed data platforms
DevOps & MLOps
- CI/CD pipelines
- Infrastructure as Code
- Containerization
- Kubernetes
- Automated testing
- MLOps platforms
Preferred Google Experience
Strong preference for candidates with:
- Prior Google engineering experience.
- Experience building and operating systems inside the Google 1P ecosystem.
- Exposure to Borg, Spanner, Blaze, Monarch, Dapper, google3, Critique, and related internal tooling.
Pay
Benefits
Skills
Who can apply
The employer didn't state any visa, work authorization, citizenship or clearance requirements in this posting. Confirm with the employer before applying.
Read automatically from the employer's posting text. Always confirm with the employer — requirements can change after a job is published.