Staff Software Engineer, Site Reliability Engineering, Traffic Virtnet

Zapier · Sunnyvale, CA

staff Software Engineer tech_leadership · Posted May 6, 2026
$207,000 – $300,000
USD per year

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) combines software and systems engineering to build and run large-scale, massively distributed, fault-tolerant systems. SRE ensures that Google Cloud's services—both our internally critical and our externally-visible systems—have reliability, uptime appropriate to customer's needs and a fast rate of improvement. Additionally SRE’s will keep an ever-watchful eye on our systems capacity and performance.

Much of our software development focuses on optimizing existing systems, building infrastructure and eliminating work through automation. On the SRE team, you’ll have the opportunity to manage the complex challenges of scale which are unique to Google Cloud, while using your expertise in coding, algorithms, complexity analysis and large-scale system design. SRE's culture of intellectual curiosity, problem solving and openness is key to its success. Our organization brings together people with a wide variety of backgrounds, experiences and perspectives. We encourage them to collaborate, think big and take risks in a blame-free environment. We promote self-direction to work on meaningful projects, while we also strive to create an environment that provides the support and mentorship needed to learn and grow.

Traffic Virtnet (Virtual Network) Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) supports the control and data plane for Andromeda, the Software Defined Network (SDN) stack that is behind the Google Cloud Platform. The software that we support makes possible services like Internal Load Balancing (ILB), Google Cloud Load Balancing, Network Service Tiers, Virtual Private Cloud, etc.

Behind everything our users see online is the architecture built by the Technical Infrastructure team to keep it running. From developing and maintaining our data centers to building the next generation of Google platforms, we make Google's product portfolio possible. We're proud to be our engineers' engineers and love voiding warranties by taking things apart so we can rebuild them. We keep our networks up and running, ensuring our users have the best and fastest experience possible.

The US base salary range for this full-time position is $207,000-$300,000 + bonus + equity + benefits. Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Within the range, individual pay is determined by work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during the hiring process.

Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only, and do not include bonus, equity, or benefits. Learn more about benefits at Google.

Responsibilities

  • Engage in and improve the whole lifecycle of services, from inception and design, through to deployment, operation and refinement.
  • Support services before they go live through activities such as system design consulting, developing software platforms and frameworks, capacity planning and launch reviews.
  • Maintain services once they are live by measuring and monitoring availability, latency and overall system health.
  • Scale systems sustainably through mechanisms like automation, and evolve systems by pushing for changes that improve reliability and velocity.
  • Re-architect our stack and plan the decommission of obsolete components and re-scale our base tools (monitoring, automation, rollouts).

Minimum qualifications:

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
  • 8 years of experience with software development in one or more programming languages.
  • 3 years of experience designing, analyzing, and troubleshooting distributed systems.
  • Experience in networking (e.g., TCP/IP, routing, VPNs, VLANs, peering, load balancing, etc).

Preferred qualifications:

  • Master's degree in Computer Science or Engineering.
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