Software Engineers solve complex and interesting problems. To handle information at the scale of the web requires ideas from just about every area of computer science, including information retrieval, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, distributed computing, large-scale system design, networking, security, data compression, user interface design, etc.

Click on the tabs to the left to see just a few examples of the diverse technical disciplines and projects with which you might be involved.

Advertising & Payment Systems

Advertising is Google’s primary source of revenue, and our engineers here build the innovative systems that run Google’s rapidly growing advertising business. Working in this area, you can help make our ads more relevant, create new ways to monetize our content, and develop web-based applications and automated solutions, and back-end systems to make Google’s sales and operations more productive, scalable, profitable, and responsive to customer needs. Our Ads engineers perform content analysis, develop advertising ranking and auction algorithms, fight click fraud, and support complex high-volume transaction processing systems that demand high security and availability.

Relevant technical backgrounds include: Large Scale Distributed Systems, Web Application Development, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, High Volume Transaction Processing, User Interface Development, and Algorithms.

Core Search & Search Products

Google is best known for Search, and our research scientists and engineers work on a broad array of projects to continuously improve the overall Google search experience -- from crawling the web and developing ranking algorithms, to building pipeline infrastructure, maintaining precision and fighting spam. Our search engineers also help to provide a rich, engaging experience for users by internationalizing the interface, personalizing results, and measuring user happiness. Here you can make Google search more comprehensive with an increasingly diverse range of content including images, video, news, books, and more.

Relevant technical backgrounds include: Information Retrieval and Data Mining, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, Large Scale Distributed Systems, User Interface Development, and Algorithms.

Engineering Productivity & Developer Tools

Here you can create systems and tools to maximize efficiency and productivity of engineers. Our engineers here create the open source products, toolkits and public APIs we make available for third-party developers to use – such as Google Web Toolkit and AppEngine – as well as the IDEs, build systems and release tools, compiler toolchains, and automated test tools that Google’s own engineers use to develop our products.

Relevant technical backgrounds include: Compilers and Software Tools, IDE development, Open Source Development, Test Automation, Web Application Development.

Large Production Systems Engineering

The software and systems engineers working in this area focus on Google’s rapid traffic growth and global expansion through their expertise in troubleshooting, tools development, and production systems automation. They provide guidance to our product engineering teams during the development cycle to help them understand and comply with our architectural guidelines for reliability, speed, and scalability – and also partner with them during the launch and deployment of new products and services. With your in-depth knowledge of capacity planning, optimization, and traffic load balancing, you can manage and maintain services, ensuring their reliability and availability for hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

Relevant technical backgrounds include: Large Scale Distributed Systems, Performance Management and Optimization, Systems Engineering, Networking, Troubleshooting, Algorithms.

Mobile & Client Engineering

In addition to our large scale distributed systems and web applications, Google also has engineers developing mobile applications and building our rapidly growing Android, Chrome, and ChromeOS platforms. You can work with our mobile engineers to create mobile and location-based versions of our popular web applications, as well as innovative new products like Google Goggles, Google Navigation, and Google Voice. Our Android team has engineers working on all levels of the stack – from the core operating system to the user interface – and engineers on our Chrome/ChromeOS teams are leading the industry in their efforts to enable web applications to be faster, more robust, and more secure.

Relevant technical backgrounds include: Android Application Development, Mac and Windows Development, iOS (iPhone and iPad) Development, Embedded Systems, Operating Systems, Networking, Multimedia, Security, Speech, User Interface Development.

Systems Infrastructure & Platforms

Engineers in our infrastructure groups design, develop, test, and optimize the custom software systems and hardware platforms we use to serve Google’s search, ads, and web-based applications. Here you can take on the challenge of building highly scalable, secure, and fault-tolerant distributed systems infrastructure and storage systems such as MapReduce, Bigtable, and the Google File System. Our platforms engineers create the next-generation networking systems and architecture, powerful energy-efficient server hardware, and cluster OS that power Google’s massive data centers.

Relevant technical backgrounds include: Large Scale Distributed Systems, Networking, Storage, Operating Systems, Parallel Computing, Performance Analysis and Optimization, Security, Hardware/Firmware.

User-Facing Web Applications

Google today is much more than search. From Gmail, Calendar, Docs and Spreadsheets to YouTube, Reader, Maps and Earth, our engineers in this area design and develop all of the innovative web applications that our users have come to know and love. Here you can also build products for small and large businesses, educational institutions, and government agencies as part of our Enterprise team.

Relevant technical backgrounds include: Web Application Development, Large Scale Distributed Systems, User Interface Development, Computer Vision and Graphics, Video.