Staff Software Engineer, Experience Lead

About the job

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.

In this role, you will create the preferred Avatar ecosystem for Android XR users and developers through high quality Human and AI powered Avatars.

For decades, the computing revolution has reshaped our world driven by breakthroughs in compute, connectivity, mobile, and now, AI. The XR team is at the forefront of the next major leap - the convergence of AI and XR. This is more than just new devices - it's about reimagining how we interact with the world around us. We're building a future where lightweight XR devices like smart glasses and headsets pair with helpful AI to augment human intelligence, offering personalized, conversational, and contextually aware experiences.

US: $207000 - $300000 (USD) + 20% bonus target + equity + benefits

Learn more about benefits at Google.

Responsibilities

• Support the end-to-end ownership and expansion of the Likeness Android app (photoreal avatars for communication launched on Galaxy XR) to more XR and mobile devices.
• Have a key understanding of the AI technology being developed within the team, and develop experiences around them to demo and potentially expand into user facing applications.
• Support integration of AI models into XR and mobile applications.
• Own Quality Assurance (QA), release processes, PWG and legal discussions for application launches.
• Expand experiences to IOS. Leverage AI to implement and test the end to end experience as needed.

Qualifications

Minimum qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 8 years of experience in software development.
• 5 years of experience with full stack development, across back-end such as Java, Python, Golang, or C++ codebases, and front-end experience including JavaScript or TypeScript, HTML, CSS or equivalent.
• 2 years of technical leadership experience, including end-to-end ownership of Android applications (frontend, backend, security, privacy).

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience with Camera APIs and high-performance real-time media/sensor pipelines.
• Direct experience managing sensitive user data, navigating Privacy Reviews (PWG/PDD).
• Experience with IOS and web development.
• Familiarity with on-device ML/computer vision frameworks (LiteRT/TensorFlow Lite, MediaPipe) and JNI/NDK native bridging.
• Familiarity with 3D graphics rendering on mobile (OpenGL ES, Vulkan, or SceneCore).
• Track record of partnering closely with ML researchers and UX to translate complex capture algorithms into intuitive, consumer-facing experiences.