Distinguished Engineer, App and Ecosystem Trust

About the job

As a Distinguished Engineer, you will serve as the senior-most technical authority and Individual Contributor (IC) defining and executing the long-term technical strategy for App and Ecosystem Trust (AET) globally. In this role, your technical leadership and architectural influence will extend across Product Areas (PAs), partnering across Platforms & Devices (P&D) and Android Platform, and with Google Play, DeepMind (GDM), Core Security, and Google-wide AI Safety councils.

This role requires a rare combination of visionary strategic architecture and technical depth. You will establish a 3-5+ year technical trajectory, leading Google’s transition to Autonomous Defense, transforming safety systems from reactive classification into self-healing, adaptive security architectures capable of neutralizing polymorphic malware, content abuse, and fraud at ecosystem scale.

Furthermore, as software architectures evolve toward agentic workflows, you will pioneer and define the architecture for "Agentic Safety" at Google. You will design foundational security guardrails, policy enforcement engines, sandboxed runtime environments, and protocol security for autonomous AI agents, tool-use protocols, and connected app ecosystems.

Reporting directly to the VP/GM of App and Ecosystem Trust, you will partner with engineering and product executives across Google to establish technical consensus, solve high-stakes platform safety challenges, and represent Google’s technical leadership across the global tech industry.

US: $550,000 (USD) + 80% bonus target + equity + benefits

Learn more about benefits at Google.

Responsibilities

• Drive the structural transition to Autonomous Defense by applying state-of-the-art AI, foundation models, and adaptive security architectures.
• Serve as the principal technical bridge between AET and broader Platforms & Devices, Android Platform, Google Play, GDM, Central Security, and Google Cloud.
• Translate cutting-edge AI/ML and cybersecurity research into robust, high-throughput, production-grade defenses, balancing rapid threat containment with long-term platform resilience and simplicity.
• Sponsor, coach, and elevate senior engineering talent (Staff, Senior Staff, and Principal Engineers) globally.
• Represent Google with external industry consortia, academic institutions, standards bodies, and global regulatory/technical forums. Define and architect Google’s technical paradigm for Agentic Safety.

Qualifications

Minimum qualifications:

• 20 years of experience bringing systems-thinking, business and technical acumen to the development of platforms
• Experience in Trust & Safety, Mobile security, Privacy or related domains
• Experience leading innovation, leveraging ML/AI in technical environments
• Experience managing teams
• Experience in consumer marketplaces

Preferred qualifications:

• Master’s degree or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Cybersecurity, Machine Learning, or related
• Exceptional executive communication and influence skills, with demonstrated success partnering with VP/SVP engineering leadership, product executives, and advanced AI research organizations
• Recognized industry authority with contributions to open security standards, developer ecosystems, technical advisory boards, or leading peer-reviewed publications/patents in cybersecurity or AI safety
• Deep domain expertise in agentic AI runtime security, sandboxing, protocol verification, and adversarial machine learning defenses
• Proven success leading complex, multi-year cross-product area technical transformations and driving architectural alignment across global engineering hubs