What are the responsibilities and job description for the Software Engineer, Early Stage Project position at X, The Moonshot Factory?
About X
X is Alphabet’s moonshot factory with a mission of inventing and launching “moonshot” technologies that could someday make the world a radically better place. We are a diverse group of inventors and entrepreneurs who build and launch technologies that aim to improve the lives of millions, even billions, of people. Our goal: 10x impact on the world’s most intractable problems, not just 10% improvement. We approach projects that have the aspiration and riskiness of research with the speed and ambition of a startup. As an innovation engine, X focuses on repeatedly turning breakthrough-technology ideas into the foundations for large, sustainable businesses.
About The Team
We're a small, passionate and driven team of experienced ML researchers, software engineers and product managers on a mission to make the practice of law radically more efficient and accurate. Our project is focusing on de-risking our technology quickly, refining our tech prototypes, running experiments with partners and developing a valuable product for our users. Our culture is one of mutual care & respect, individual competence and most important of all, fun!
About The Role
As a generalist software engineer, you will own end-to-end development of breakthrough technologies that rely heavily on large language models. Your work will span the stack, from occasional light frontend development, to the Python microservice layer, associated APIs, data storage and bulk data processing working on Google Cloud Platform. You will work closely with domain experts to refine and iterate on our technology stack, and we will rely on you to apply your knowledge and expertise to come up with and implement novel and impactful ideas.
How You Will Make 10X Impact
Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only, and do not include bonus, or benefits.
X is Alphabet’s moonshot factory with a mission of inventing and launching “moonshot” technologies that could someday make the world a radically better place. We are a diverse group of inventors and entrepreneurs who build and launch technologies that aim to improve the lives of millions, even billions, of people. Our goal: 10x impact on the world’s most intractable problems, not just 10% improvement. We approach projects that have the aspiration and riskiness of research with the speed and ambition of a startup. As an innovation engine, X focuses on repeatedly turning breakthrough-technology ideas into the foundations for large, sustainable businesses.
About The Team
We're a small, passionate and driven team of experienced ML researchers, software engineers and product managers on a mission to make the practice of law radically more efficient and accurate. Our project is focusing on de-risking our technology quickly, refining our tech prototypes, running experiments with partners and developing a valuable product for our users. Our culture is one of mutual care & respect, individual competence and most important of all, fun!
About The Role
As a generalist software engineer, you will own end-to-end development of breakthrough technologies that rely heavily on large language models. Your work will span the stack, from occasional light frontend development, to the Python microservice layer, associated APIs, data storage and bulk data processing working on Google Cloud Platform. You will work closely with domain experts to refine and iterate on our technology stack, and we will rely on you to apply your knowledge and expertise to come up with and implement novel and impactful ideas.
How You Will Make 10X Impact
- Act like an owner; be fearless in diving deep, asking questions, proposing solutions, establishing consensus and then making shit happen.
- Design and implement robust, automated, production-grade software using horizontally scalable components, while applying software engineering best practices. This includes strong code quality and understanding of the software release lifecycle, e.g. unit testing, CI/CD and production operations
- Work effectively with cross-functional teams of engineers, product managers, and domain experts
- Provide direction and focus in areas of high ambiguity
- Enjoy mentoring junior engineers and helping a team grow
- Significant on-the-job experience designing, developing, maintaining and releasing software, along with ownership in making product tradeoffs and design decisions
- Strong proficiency in Python development, with experience in the latest Python toolchains and frameworks, e.g. uv, ruff, fastapi, Pydantic
- Experience in containerization and job management, e.g. Docker, Kubernetes.
- Experience with building data pipelines, e.g. one or more of Beam, Dataflow, Flume, Flink, Hadoop, Spark
- Experience interacting with diverse data storage solutions, e.g. NoSQL, SQL, blob storage, and understanding the pros and cons of each
- Experience with managing software in production, including configuration, deployment and monitoring
- Experience with Cloud providers such as Google Cloud Platform or AWS.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, e.g. design docs, PR descriptions
- Ability to work in the Mountain View office at least 3 days per week
- Bachelors/Masters in Computer Science is preferred, but at least 6 years professional experience building products is required.
- Experience in infrastructure-as-code, e.g. Terraform
- Exposure to productions systems that rely heavily on ML models, and/or experience with model deployment
- Experience working in start-up like environments where things can change on a dime
- Consistent track record of delivering high quality solutions to large, complex software problems
- Experience in finding the exact right meme or gif for any situation
- Joy in learning new technologies, learning from your teammates and teaching them as well!
- Passion for delighting users, but also extracting energy from both good and difficult feedback
- Experience in agonizing over a technical decision for about ten minutes before understanding what the product and the team needs most and doing that (but then still wondering if you did the right thing)
Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only, and do not include bonus, or benefits.
