Staff Network Engineer, Google Distributed Cloud
Google · Kirkland, WA
$176,000–$257,000from the description
Jul 20, 2026
Kirkland, WA
Jul 22, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior individual-contributor role focused on the network fabric of Google Distributed Cloud — a converged hardware-software product that runs in air-gapped or edge customer environments. Day-to-day work spans designing and operating multi-layer networks (physical, overlay, host, and Kubernetes), resolving deep production issues, improving reliability and scaling models, and leading cross-team engineering efforts. Suits engineers with a decade of routing-protocol and network-design experience, ideally with data-center overlay technologies and some programming background.
Staff level · 10+ years · Sunnyvale, CA · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
Posted 2 times — it's one opening, so apply once.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
Why we read it this way (9)
The role is posted for multiple locations: Sunnyvale, CA; Kirkland, WA; and New York, NY. Sunnyvale is used as the primary CBSA; Kirkland (Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA, CBSA 42660) and New York (New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA, CBSA 35620) are also valid work sites.
The 10-year experience requirement is explicitly tied to 'network routing protocols, design and troubleshooting' — captured as the role-level overall years minimum as well as on the relevant skills.
The preferred 5-year experience requirement covers 'performance infrastructure, distributed systems, or compute technologies, storage or hardware architecture' — a broad cluster; 'distributed systems' is used as the representative skill name.
Programming language experience (C++, Go, Python) is listed under Preferred qualifications; C++ is the primary with Go and Python as named alternatives.
Kubernetes appears in the product/stack description of GDC network fabric rather than in a formal qualifications section; included as preferred given its relevance to the described environment.
The SOC classification is a genuine judgment call: the role involves deep network design, routing, and operations (15-1244) but also explicitly calls for coding/scripting and software development of performance infrastructure (15-1252). 15-1244 is chosen as primary because the core day-to-day work centers on network engineering and operations; 15-1252 is the runner-up.
Compensation is stated as $176,000–$257,000/year plus a 20% bonus target and equity; the bonus and equity are not captured in the comp fields, which reflect base salary only.
The degree requirement states 'Bachelor's degree … or equivalent practical experience,' so no hard degree gate applies.
Ignored 2 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): network design, network troubleshooting.
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