Director, Engineering, AI Studio, Gemini API

Director, Engineering, AI Studio, Gemini API

Join Google DeepMind's high-visibility AI Studio and Gemini API team and play a pivotal role in shaping the future of AI development! As a Software Engineering Manager, you will lead and grow a team of exceptional software engineers, while still maintaining a deeply technical understanding and influence over critical Gemini API features that empower developers worldwide. This role demands a proven track record of delivering highly scalable, high-performance AI solutions, often leading complex technical initiatives from inception to launch. You'll collaborate closely with product managers, Technical Program Managers (TPMs), and fellow engineers, providing technical leadership and mentorship while maintaining a significant coding presence. If you are an exceptional leader with a strong understanding of AI concepts, a history of driving architectural decisions, and a passion for both building groundbreaking technology and empowering people, we want to hear from you! You can see some of our work at aistudio.google.com.

Artificial Intelligence could be one of humanity's most useful inventions. At Google DeepMind, we're a team of scientists, engineers, machine learning experts and more, working together to advance the state of the art in artificial intelligence. We use our technologies for widespread public benefit and scientific discovery, and collaborate with others on critical challenges, ensuring safety and ethics are the highest priority.

We are looking for a Director of Engineering who is passionate about making Gemini Models win the hearts and minds of developers. This role is motivated by the critical capabilities we can build on top of Gemini models and externalize to the world. You will operate with significant autonomy, leading a team to drive technical direction and execution for key areas of the Gemini API and serving infrastructure.

Key Responsibilities :

Lead, mentor, and grow a team of Software Engineers, fostering a high-performance culture, promoting technical excellence, and ensuring career development for your direct reports.

Define and drive the technical strategy and roadmap for highly scalable and robust Gemini API features and infrastructure, used to externalize Gemini Models and their tooling ecosystem to external developers.

Oversee and guide the scaling of the Gemini Model serving stack to handle billions of requests per day and support millions of developers, ensuring the team identifies and resolves complex performance bottlenecks.

Provide architectural oversight and strategic direction for significant components within the entire lifecycle of the Model serving stack, from research and internal testing to externalization via API and AI Studio.

Contribute to hands-on development as needed, especially for critical path items, complex architectural decisions, or to unblock the team, while primarily focusing on managerial responsibilities.

Drive the productionization of new generative AI technical stacks, ensuring the team delivers robust, production-scale features.

Collaborate strategically with partner Product Areas / teams at a senior level to advance LLM state-of-the-art techniques and realize significant real-world product impact.

Own the operationalization strategy for Gemini models from research / internal testing to external developers in production, setting the standards for reliability and scalability.

Innovate and implement solutions to build a production environment that can reliably scale to billions of requests, ensuring high availability and low latency.

Manage project priorities, deadlines, and deliverables, effectively allocating resources and mitigating risks.

In order to set you up for success as a Software Engineering Manager at Google DeepMind, we look for the following skills and experience :

Master's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

15+ years of experience in software development, including significant experience in a technical leadership or management role, leading high-performing engineering teams.

Proven experience managing, mentoring, and developing a team of software engineers, including performance management, career growth, and fostering a collaborative team environment.

Expert-level proficiency in software architecture, distributed systems design, and scalable infrastructure.

Proven track record of leading complex technical projects from conception to launch, demonstrating significant impact.

Demonstrated ability to drive inter-team and cross-functional collaboration at a senior leadership level.

Exceptional problem-solving skills with a proven track record of innovative ideas and excellent execution in challenging technical domains.

Deep understanding of code collaboration best practices and experience with large-scale monorepos.

In addition, the following would be an advantage :

Extensive experience with Generative AI models and applications, either through direct development or strategic oversight.

Experience with Full-Stack Development, particularly in environments that interact with complex backend AI services.

Proficiency in one or more general-purpose programming languages (e.g., Go, Python, Node.js, C++, Kotlin) relevant to large-scale systems.