Software Engineer, BigQuery Metadata, Storage Lifecycle

About the position 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. To build and optimize the intelligent storage management layer of the AI Lakehouse at exabyte scale. We decouple data from physical infrastructure to deliver instant zero-copy operations, data protection, and automated cost optimization, ensuring BigQuery remains the most efficient and reliable data warehouse in the world. Our goal is to scale and simplify resource usage by transforming expensive physical data operations into efficient, metadata-driven interactions. We bridge the gap between logical user intent and physical storage execution. We own the critical background operations that make BigQuery storage scalable, cost-effective, and durable including Time Travel, Snapshots, Clones, Tiering, and Cross-Region Table Copy. In this role, you will work on a live, exabyte-scale system, solving complex distributed systems problems where metadata scale and physical storage constraints collide. Google Cloud accelerates every organization's ability to digitally transform its business and industry. We deliver enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Google's cutting-edge technology, and tools that help developers build more sustainably. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems. The US base salary range for this full-time position is $141,000-$202,000 + bonus + equity + benefits. Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Within the range, individual pay is determined by work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during the hiring process. Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only, and do not include bonus, equity, or benefits. Learn more about benefits at Google.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement the systems that separates logical bytes from physical bytes, enabling instant table clones and snapshot. Lead the transition of legacy systems toward metadata-driven operations to reduce storage footprints and improve margins, and improve the massive-scale garbage collection pipelines required to reclaim physical resources and ensure system health.
• Design and maintain data copy and replication solutions that allow data to move seamlessly between regions and cells. Ensure high availability and facilitate migration scenarios without user downtime.
• Implement capabilities to automatically classify data based on access patterns, optimizing costs for both Google and our enterprise customers.
• Manage the safety net of BigQuery by building enterprise-grade backup, recovery, fail-safe automation, and undelete capabilities.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 2 years of experience with software development or 1 year of experience with an advanced degree in an industry setting.
• 2 years of experience with developing large-scale infrastructure, distributed systems or networks, or with compute technologies, storage or hardware architecture.
• Experience with Distributed Systems, Storage Systems, or Database Internals.
• Experience building and maintaining large-scale infrastructure or background data processing pipelines.
• Experience in Software development using general-purpose programming languages (e.g., Java or C++).

Nice-to-haves

• Master's degree or PhD in Computer Science or related technical fields.
• Experience with highly scalable storage systems (e.g., Colossus, Blobstore, or GCS) and metadata management with understanding of consistency models and replication strategies.
• Experience with copy-on-write mechanisms or storage virtualization to improve performance and efficiency.
• Experience building accurate metering, billing, or tiered storage logic for cloud services.
• Experience with background process management (e.g. Flume, Borg, Queue-based processing) and refactoring legacy systems for reliability and service isolation.
• Familiarity with backup/recovery semantics or disaster recovery planning.

Benefits

• bonus
• equity
• benefits

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