Principal Engineer, Hybrid Cloud Environment

About the role

As Principal Engineer and Unified Tech Lead (UTL) for the Hybrid Cloud Environment (HCE) team, you will be the primary technical authority for the organization, owning the technical direction and multi-year roadmap of the Hybrid Cloud Environment platform. The platform compiles natural-language developer intent and declarative governance into secure, compliant, scalable cloud environments, abstracting away the operational friction of cloud resource provisioning such as IAM, VPC Service Controls, BeyondCorp and Cloud DLP. It bridges traditional developer ecosystems (such as Google3) with Google Cloud Platform.

Key responsibilities

• Define the compiler that translates natural-language intent and decorators (including residency and budget) into secure cloud environments, establish a reference implementation with a federated registry and host autonomous AI agents with strictly bounded, non-amplifiable credentials.
• Lead the design of the control plane with zero-trust identity using short-lived credentials integrated with Google's identity plane and Sigstore attestations.
• Use automated drift pipelines, reaper protocols and CVE controllers to eliminate manual compliance tickets.
• Mentor staff and senior engineers and foster an AI-fluent culture of rapid, safe iteration.
• Represent engineering standards across Google and represent the organization across Core and Product areas to arbitrate complex disputes.
• Collaborate across boundaries to establish a safe adoption ratchet and drive organic GCP adoption.

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 15 years of experience in software engineering focused on large-scale, distributed cloud infrastructure, policy engines or control planes.
• Technical leadership experience leading senior engineering teams and defining multi-year architectural strategies.
• Preferred: experience with AI application platforms, prompt engineering systems or agentic workflows, and deep familiarity with developer infrastructure and Cloud Platform solutions.
• Preferred: track record designing compilers, policy engines or domain-specific languages that turn high-level configurations or intents into secure cloud configurations.
• Preferred: exceptional executive communication and influence, able to lead across organizational boundaries and align executive priorities.

What we offer

• Health, dental, vision, life and disability insurance, plus retirement benefits (401(k) with company match).
• 20 days of vacation per year, accruing at 6.15 hours per pay period for the first five years.
• Sick time of 40 hours per year (69 hours in Seattle), including 5 discretionary sick days per instance.
• Maternity leave of 28-30 weeks and baby bonding leave of 18 weeks.
• 13 paid holidays per year.
• Salary of EUR 232,000-237,000 plus 30% bonus target, equity and benefits in Germany; USD 307,000-427,000 plus 30% bonus target, equity and benefits in the US.