Google · 11 hours ago
Staff Software Engineer, Applied Research, Foundation User Models
Mountain View, CA, USA
Full-time
Onsite
Lead/Staff
$197K/yr - $291K/yr
8+ years expGoogle is a leading technology company focused on developing next-generation technologies that impact billions of users. They are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead applied research in the Foundation User Models team, focusing on optimizing machine learning models for recommendations and user modeling.
AppsArtificial Intelligence (AI)Cloud StorageSearch EngineSEO
Responsibilities
Define and execute the applied research roadmap for the Large User Model ecosystem, balancing immediate customer needs with long-term technical evolution to scale foundational models across high-traffic surfaces
Support initiatives with product leadership to translate complex business goals into technical model formulations, delivering step-function improvements in user engagement and business metrics while optimizing for latency and performance trade-offs
Optimize model performance by researching and implementing adaptation techniques (transfer learning/domain adaptation) that balances high-quality output with strict inference latency requirements for production environments
Drive architectural improvements by establishing a strategic feedback loop with pre-training teams, utilizing downstream performance analysis to influence data curation, model architecture, and novel evaluation metrics for engagement-specific needs
Design and productionize fine-tuning pipelines that translate general-purpose state-of-the-art (SoTA) Foundation User Models into effective, domain-specific recommendation engines
Qualification
Required
Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience
8 years of experience in software development
5 years of experience testing, and launching software products, and 3 years of experience with software design and architecture
5 years of experience with ML design (e.g., model deployment, model evaluation, data processing, debugging, fine-tuning)
Experience with Transformer-based models (e.g., BERT, T5, GPT, ViT), with a focus on attention mechanisms and architecture variations
Preferred
Master's degree or PhD in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field
8 years of experience with data structures/algorithms
3 years of experience in a technical leadership role leading project teams and setting technical direction
3 years of experience working in a complex, matrixed organization involving cross-functional, or cross-business projects
Experience of publishing in venues or contributing to open-source projects related to RecSys, transfer learning, NLP/CV, or multimodal systems
Understanding of modern recommendation architectures (e.g., two-tower models, sequential user modeling) and how to integrate Large Foundation Models into existing ranking/retrieval stacks
Benefits
Bonus
Equity
Benefits
Company
Google specializes in internet-related services and products, including search, advertising, and software. It is a sub-organization of Alphabet.
10001+ employees
H1B Sponsorship
Google has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (8763)
2024 (8872)
2023 (9682)
2022 (11626)
2021 (9109)
2020 (9785)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$26.1MKey Investors
Andy Bechtolsheim
2004-08-19IPO
1999-06-07Series Unknown· $25M
1998-11-01Angel· $1M
Leadership Team
Sundar Pichai
CEO
Thomas Kurian
CEO - Google Cloud
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