What are the responsibilities and job description for the Staff Software Engineer - Gemini Application Layer position at DeepMind?
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Snapshot
Join the Gemini Application team at Google DeepMind as a Senior Individual Contributor, where you'll directly impact the user experience of gemini.google.com and the Google Gemini mobile apps. You'll lead the evolution of our middle layer technical architecture, driving feature integration, API consolidation, and performance optimization alongside a team of 60 engineers globally. Leveraging your backend experience, you'll define roadmaps and ensure reliability, playing a crucial role in delivering impactful AI products and contributing to the rapidly evolving LLM space.
About us
Artificial Intelligence could be one of humanity’s most useful inventions. At Google DeepMind, we’re a team of scientists, engineers, machine learning experts and more, working together to advance the state of the art in artificial intelligence. We use our technologies for widespread public benefit and scientific discovery, and collaborate with others on critical challenges, ensuring safety and ethics are the highest priority.
The Bard team is part of Google DeepMind (GDM) and refers to the cross-functional product team building the Gemini web and mobile apps (gemini.google.com for Web, Google Gemini on app stores).
Within the Bard team, the Bard Application team builds and maintains the web client code for gemini.google.com and a collection of middle-layer services serving the Gemini web, mobile apps, and other surfaces.
The focus of this role is to evolve and maintain the Bard application layer through setting technical direction and direct contributions. The Bard Application layer is the primary interface between front-end surface adaptation services and LLM serving backends, user data storage, and logging infrastructure. It does not include the ML serving / orchestration layer (ML experience is not necessary).
The team has growing needs and we would like to hire an additional senior IC.
The role
Key expectations: steer the Application layer technical architecture, integrate new features, consolidate APIs, measure and improve performance.
This is a senior IC role with Java/Kotlin middle layer infrastructure focus. You will be expected to define the technical roadmap for the Bard Application layer in collaboration with other leads, execute integrations and migrations as needed to make progress on the Gemini feature roadmap, and scale our serving architecture to keep it maintainable, reliable, and unblock new product capabilities.
The Bard Application team is split between primarily Zurich, New York and Mountain View, with some cross-timezone collaboration to be expected. You will be expected to take part in shared maintenance responsibilities (release rotation, triage, bug fixing), during Zurich working hours only. Work on Bard has a rapid pace and high ambiguity. You will be expected to effectively triage urgent requests, balance short-term and long-term architecture priorities.
While the main role is technical and IC focused, taking on management responsibilities may be a possibility especially as the team continues to grow.
Our backend nodes are primarily Java/Kotlin, some in C .
Key responsibilities
- Plan the technical roadmap for the Bard Application layer and execute large changes and API consolidations
- Design, develop, and test a set of microservices used by Gemini web and mobile apps
- Collaborate with 60 engineers across timezones touching the middle layer codebase
- Implement new end-to-end features & support other teams across Gemini with their infrastructure needs (typically: middle-layer integrations between front-end clients and LLM serving, storage back-ends, logging infrastructure; new APIs/services to support new features & surfaces; protocol changes including streaming multimodal content)
- Manage the deployment of new binaries and feature configurations
- Shape the future of AI at Google and in the world
About you
You have broad and deep experience with serving, storage and logging infrastructure at Google or on other large, user-facing software products and would like to make AI products more useful for everyone.
In order to set you up for success as a Staff Software Engineer at Google DeepMind, we look for the following skills and experience:
- 5 years experience in Java/Kotlin serving infrastructure & API design and proven delivery of scalable backend services
- Clear, structured technical communication in verbal and written English
- BS degree in Computer Science, similar technical field of study or equivalent practical experience
- Commitment to fostering an inclusive environment
In addition, the following would be an advantage:
- Familiarity with performance optimization in distributed systems
- Familiarity with logging practices, navigating privacy and security requirements
- Familiarity with storage systems, replication, consistency
- Interest in the rapidly evolving LLM space is preferred
