Software Engineer, YouTube GDA Semantic Layer at Google

Seniority in posting: Advanced

Compensation

$207,000 – $300,000/yr

Location: San Bruno, California
Type: Full-time
Level: senior
Posted: Aug 6, 2026

Description

Google is hiring a Software Engineer for its YouTube GDA team to architect and operate the semantic layer powering YouTube SQL Assistant and YouTube Debugger. The role focuses on RAG context construction, embedding and retrieval strategies, real-time data pipelines, model evaluation and fine-tuning, and technical leadership. Candidates need a bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience, 8 years of software development experience, and substantial experience in software testing, architecture, and machine learning. The position offers a US salary of $207,000–$300,000 plus a 20% bonus target, equity, and benefits.

Required Skills

RAG systems
Embedding strategies
Data pipelines
SQL
TensorFlow
Natural language processing
Context retrieval

Additional Information

Minimum Education: Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience
Required Previous Experiences: 8 years of software development experience
5 years of software testing and product launch experience
3 years of software design and architecture experience
5 years of machine learning, artificial intelligence, deep learning, or natural language processing experience
Preferred Qualifications: 8 years of data structures and algorithms experience
Experience leading technical strategy for large-scale projects and mentoring executive engineers
Experience designing complex context retrieval systems for large language models in production
Proficiency in SQL
Understanding of vector space models, semantic search, and embedding evaluation techniques
Ability to query massive datasets and drive data-informed architectural decisions