Lead Software Engineer Jobs in San Jose, CA
Lead Software Engineer jobs in San Jose are in strong demand, concentrated in North San Jose, Downtown, and the Santana Row corridor across enterprise software, semiconductor design, cloud infrastructure, and cybersecurity. Employers hiring right now include Cadence Design Systems, TikTok, and Google. See the openings below and apply to the ones that match your experience.
Find Lead Software Engineer JobsOverview
Showing 5 of 317+ Lead Software Engineer jobs
Minimum qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.
- 8 years of experience in software development.
- 7 years of experience leading technical project strategy, ML design, and end-to-end Machine Learning (e.g., model deployment, model evaluation, data processing, debugging).
- 5 years of experience with design and architecture; and testing/launching software products.
- 5 years of experience with one or more of the following: Speech/audio (e.g., technology duplicating and responding to the human voice), reinforcement learning (e.g., sequential decision making), ML infrastructure, or specialization in another ML field.
- Experience designing software architecture for applications, including AI/ML systems.
Preferred qualifications:
- Experience designing and building distributed systems.
- Experience programming in C++, Java, Protocol Buffers, and SQL data pipelines.
- Experience designing and operating distributed data telemetry systems, streaming or batch ingestion pipelines, or observability infrastructure.
- Experience translating difficult technical challenges into production architectures with measurable reliability and adoption.
- Experience with AI or Large Language Model agent architectures, agent trajectory logging, and evaluation pipelines.
- Experience designing privacy-preserving analytics systems and high-performance analytical serving layers.
About the job
Google's software engineers develop the next-generation technologies that change how billions of users connect, explore, and interact with information and one another. Our products need to handle information at massive scale, and extend well beyond web search. We're looking for engineers who bring fresh ideas from all areas, including information retrieval, distributed computing, large-scale system design, networking and data storage, security, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, UI design and mobile; the list goes on and is growing every day. As a software engineer, you will work on a specific project critical to Google’s needs with opportunities to switch teams and projects as you and our fast-paced business grow and evolve. We need our engineers to be versatile, display leadership qualities and be enthusiastic to take on new problems across the full-stack as we continue to push technology forward.
The Core team builds the technical foundation behind Google’s flagship products. We are owners and advocates for the underlying design elements, developer platforms, product components, and infrastructure at Google. These are the essential building blocks for excellent, safe, and coherent experiences for our users and drive the pace of innovation for every developer. We look across Google’s products to build central solutions, break down technical barriers and strengthen existing systems. As the Core team, we have a mandate and a unique opportunity to impact important technical decisions across the company.
Individual pay is determined by factors including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.US: $262000 - $364000 (USD) + 25% bonus target + equity + benefits
Learn more about benefits at Google.
Responsibilities
- Architect canonical, evolution-safe telemetry agreements and schemas building on integration event protos, trajectory schemas, and AI-assisted instrumentation across developer and DevAI surfaces so new agentic tools emit structured, high-signal telemetry by default.
- Design and build low-latency ingestion, deterministic sampling, Personally Identifiable Information (PII) redaction, and LLM-powered trajectory classification pipelines.
- Build core attribution engines linking multi-turn agent trajectories, tool calls, skill invocations, token spend, and downstream artifacts including Piper CLs, Critique reviews, Tracker issues, and test runs to power Levels of Autonomy and end-to-end Critical User Journeys.
- Establish engineering standards across the data and serving stack to eliminate pipeline fragility and enforce data freshness and completeness SLOs.
- Partner with Engineering Directors, Principal Engineers, Data Scientists, and sibling DevAI/CodeAI platform leads to unblock cross-organization instrumentation bottlenecks, review critical CLs and RFCs, and mentor engineers through example.
Minimum qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.
- 8 years of experience in software development.
- 7 years of experience leading technical project strategy, ML design, and end-to-end Machine Learning (e.g., model deployment, model evaluation, data processing, debugging).
- 5 years of experience with design and architecture; and testing/launching software products.
- 5 years of experience with one or more of the following: Speech/audio (e.g., technology duplicating and responding to the human voice), reinforcement learning (e.g., sequential decision making), ML infrastructure, or specialization in another ML field.
- Experience designing software architecture for applications, including AI/ML systems.
Preferred qualifications:
- Experience designing and building distributed systems.
- Experience programming in C++, Java, Protocol Buffers, and SQL data pipelines.
- Experience designing and operating distributed data telemetry systems, streaming or batch ingestion pipelines, or observability infrastructure.
- Experience translating difficult technical challenges into production architectures with measurable reliability and adoption.
- Experience with AI or Large Language Model agent architectures, agent trajectory logging, and evaluation pipelines.
- Experience designing privacy-preserving analytics systems and high-performance analytical serving layers.
About the job
Google's software engineers develop the next-generation technologies that change how billions of users connect, explore, and interact with information and one another. Our products need to handle information at massive scale, and extend well beyond web search. We're looking for engineers who bring fresh ideas from all areas, including information retrieval, distributed computing, large-scale system design, networking and data storage, security, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, UI design and mobile; the list goes on and is growing every day. As a software engineer, you will work on a specific project critical to Google’s needs with opportunities to switch teams and projects as you and our fast-paced business grow and evolve. We need our engineers to be versatile, display leadership qualities and be enthusiastic to take on new problems across the full-stack as we continue to push technology forward.
The Core team builds the technical foundation behind Google’s flagship products. We are owners and advocates for the underlying design elements, developer platforms, product components, and infrastructure at Google. These are the essential building blocks for excellent, safe, and coherent experiences for our users and drive the pace of innovation for every developer. We look across Google’s products to build central solutions, break down technical barriers and strengthen existing systems. As the Core team, we have a mandate and a unique opportunity to impact important technical decisions across the company.
Individual pay is determined by factors including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.US: $262000 - $364000 (USD) + 25% bonus target + equity + benefits
Learn more about benefits at Google.
Responsibilities
- Architect canonical, evolution-safe telemetry agreements and schemas building on integration event protos, trajectory schemas, and AI-assisted instrumentation across developer and DevAI surfaces so new agentic tools emit structured, high-signal telemetry by default.
- Design and build low-latency ingestion, deterministic sampling, Personally Identifiable Information (PII) redaction, and LLM-powered trajectory classification pipelines.
- Build core attribution engines linking multi-turn agent trajectories, tool calls, skill invocations, token spend, and downstream artifacts including Piper CLs, Critique reviews, Tracker issues, and test runs to power Levels of Autonomy and end-to-end Critical User Journeys.
- Establish engineering standards across the data and serving stack to eliminate pipeline fragility and enforce data freshness and completeness SLOs.
- Partner with Engineering Directors, Principal Engineers, Data Scientists, and sibling DevAI/CodeAI platform leads to unblock cross-organization instrumentation bottlenecks, review critical CLs and RFCs, and mentor engineers through example.
See All 317+ Lead Software Engineer Jobs in San Jose
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Find Lead Software Engineer JobsLead Software Engineer Job Market in San Jose
Who's Hiring
- Cadence Design Systems65
- TikTok41
- Google16
- Sikka Software16
- Collins Aerospace16
Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software41
- Automotive8
- Manufacturing8
- Staffing & Recruiting8
- Electronics & Hardware8
Lead Software Engineer Jobs in San Jose: Frequently Asked Questions
How do I get a lead software engineer job in San Jose?
The most direct path is targeting San Jose's dense concentration of large technology companies and semiconductor firms in North San Jose and the Golden Triangle area, where lead engineering roles open frequently. Candidates with distributed systems, cloud platform, or hardware-software integration experience stand out locally. Contributing to open-source projects, building a visible GitHub portfolio, and networking through San Jose-area engineering meetups all strengthen your positioning in this market.
Which companies hire lead software engineers in San Jose?
Companies currently hiring lead software engineers in San Jose include Cadence Design Systems, TikTok, and Google, per current listings on Migrate Mate as of November 2026. San Jose's hiring base skews heavily toward established technology companies, semiconductor manufacturers, and enterprise software firms, many of which maintain large engineering campuses in and around the city.
Are there remote lead software engineer jobs in San Jose?
Yes, though lead software engineer roles are moderately remote-friendly since they involve cross-functional coordination and team oversight that many employers prefer to conduct in person. About 10% of lead software engineer openings tied to San Jose are remote or hybrid as of November 2026, with fully remote positions most common at cloud and SaaS companies. Architecture, code review, and planning work tends to be the most location-flexible portion of the role.
How can I get a lead software engineer job in San Jose with little or no experience?
The most realistic path is moving through a senior engineer role at one of San Jose's mid-size technology or semiconductor companies, where internal promotions to lead happen faster than at large enterprises. Targeting startups in the North San Jose innovation corridor or established firms with strong internal mobility programs gives you the clearest route to a first lead role. Demonstrating initiative on cross-team projects and mentoring junior engineers before the title change is what most local hiring managers look for.
Which industries hire the most lead software engineers in San Jose?
The sectors hiring the most lead software engineers in San Jose are Technology & Software, Automotive, and Manufacturing, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of November 2026. San Jose's position as a global hub for semiconductor design, enterprise software, and networking technology means those industries generate a disproportionate share of senior engineering openings compared to most other U.S. cities.
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