Staff Software Engineer, TPU Performance

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.

In this role, you will work across JAX and PyTorch to squeeze maximum efficiency out of Google’s production and research workloads, like Gemini and other open-source models.

The AI and Infrastructure team is redefining what’s possible. We empower Google customers with breakthrough capabilities and insights by delivering AI and Infrastructure at unparalleled scale, efficiency, reliability and velocity. Our customers include Googlers, Google Cloud customers, and billions of Google users worldwide.

We're the driving force behind Google's groundbreaking innovations, empowering the development of our cutting-edge AI models, delivering unparalleled computing power to global services, and providing the essential platforms that enable developers to build the future. From software to hardware our teams are shaping the future of world-leading hyperscale computing, with key teams working on the development of our TPUs, Vertex AI for Google Cloud, Google Global Networking, Data Center operations, systems research, and much more.

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

US: $207000 - $301000 (USD) + 20% bonus target + equity + benefits

Learn more about benefits at Google.

Responsibilities

• Focus on Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) fleet efficiency analysis and performance optimization, while identifying and maintaining Machine Learning (ML) training and serving benchmarks.
• Use the benchmarks to identify performance opportunities and drive out-of-the-box performance by improving the compiler, runtime, etc. in collaboration with partner teams.
• Collaborate with Google product teams and researchers to solve performance problems, such as onboarding new Machine Learning models and products onto new Tensor Processing Unit hardware to enable larger models to train efficiently at a very large scale.
• Analyze performance and efficiency metrics to identify bottlenecks, design, and implement solutions at Google fleet-wide scale.
• Explore model and data efficiency techniques i.e., model co-design, quantization, and sparsity.

Qualifications

Minimum qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 8 years of experience in software development.
• 5 years of experience testing, and launching software products.
• 5 years of experience with performance, large-scale systems data analysis, visualization tools, or debugging.
• 3 years of experience with software design and architecture.
• Experience with ML performance analysis and benchmarking.

Preferred qualifications:

• Master’s degree or PhD in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
• 8 years of experience with data structures and algorithms.
• 3 years of experience in a technical leadership role leading project teams and setting technical direction.
• 3 years of experience working in an organization involving cross-functional, or cross-business projects.
• Experience optimizing for NVIDIA/AMD architectures through low-level programming, performance modeling, and bottlenecks analysis to maximize compute efficiency and memory hierarchy utilization.
• Experience in hardware-aware algorithm design and compiler stacks (e.g., OpenXLA), tailoring large-scale ML models and distributed systems for peak performance across accelerator hardware.

Additional Information

In accordance with Washington state law, we are highlighting our comprehensive benefits package, which is available to all eligible US based employees. Benefits for this role include:

• Health, dental, vision, life, disability insurance
• Retirement Benefits: 401(k) with company match
• Paid Time Off: 20 days of vacation per year, accruing at a rate of 6.15 hours per pay period for the first five years of employment
• Sick Time: 40 hours/year (increased to 69 hours/year for Seattle) including 5 discretionary sick days per instance
• Maternity Leave (Short-Term Disability + Baby Bonding): 28-30 weeks
• Baby Bonding Leave: 18 weeks
• Holidays: 13 paid days per year