Own the target-state data architecture on Google Spanner, ensuring the new data model satisfies functional correctness, performance SLOs, and transactional semantics required by 1000+ applications—before large-scale app rewrites occur.
This role is not a schema converter. It is a distributed systems architect role.
Key Responsibilities
Data Architecture & Modeling
• Define the Logical Canonical Data Model (LCDM) independent of physical storage.
• Design Spanner-native physical schemas:
o Primary key strategy
o Row key distribution (hotspot avoidance) o Interleaving decisions o Secondary index strategy • Decide where denormalization, projections, or materialized views are required.
Transaction & Consistency Design
• Define transaction boundaries under Spanner constraints:
o Single-partition vs multi-partition transactions o Atomicity and consistency trade-offs • Classify workloads by strong consistency vs bounded staleness tolerance.
• Define idempotency and retry-safe patterns.
Compatibility & Contract Validation
• Work with QA and platform teams to validate:
o CRUD contracts
o Query semantics
o Transaction invariants
• Review and sign off on schema compatibility scorecards.
Performance & Scalability
• Participate in workload replay analysis.
• Diagnose and resolve:
o Hot key risks
o Transaction conflicts
o Index amplification
• Size Spanner instances and estimate cost envelopes.
Leadership
• Act as final authority for Spanner data design decisions.
• Mentor domain architects and engineers.
• Provide executive-level architectural rationale.
Required Skills & Experience
• 10+ years in large-scale data architecture • Deep expertise in Google Spanner internals:
o TrueTime
o Distributed transactions
o Synchronous replication
• Experience designing petabyte-scale, multi-region OLTP systems • Strong understanding of:
o Distributed consistency models
o Failure modes in globally distributed databases • Prior Oracle → distributed DB migration experience strongly preferred Key Deliverables • Canonical logical data model • Spanner physical schemas & index strategies • Transaction design guidelines • Performance readiness assessments • Migration readiness sign-off per domain
This role is not a schema converter. It is a distributed systems architect role.
Key Responsibilities
Data Architecture & Modeling
• Define the Logical Canonical Data Model (LCDM) independent of physical storage.
• Design Spanner-native physical schemas:
o Primary key strategy
o Row key distribution (hotspot avoidance) o Interleaving decisions o Secondary index strategy • Decide where denormalization, projections, or materialized views are required.
Transaction & Consistency Design
• Define transaction boundaries under Spanner constraints:
o Single-partition vs multi-partition transactions o Atomicity and consistency trade-offs • Classify workloads by strong consistency vs bounded staleness tolerance.
• Define idempotency and retry-safe patterns.
Compatibility & Contract Validation
• Work with QA and platform teams to validate:
o CRUD contracts
o Query semantics
o Transaction invariants
• Review and sign off on schema compatibility scorecards.
Performance & Scalability
• Participate in workload replay analysis.
• Diagnose and resolve:
o Hot key risks
o Transaction conflicts
o Index amplification
• Size Spanner instances and estimate cost envelopes.
Leadership
• Act as final authority for Spanner data design decisions.
• Mentor domain architects and engineers.
• Provide executive-level architectural rationale.
Required Skills & Experience
• 10+ years in large-scale data architecture • Deep expertise in Google Spanner internals:
o TrueTime
o Distributed transactions
o Synchronous replication
• Experience designing petabyte-scale, multi-region OLTP systems • Strong understanding of:
o Distributed consistency models
o Failure modes in globally distributed databases • Prior Oracle → distributed DB migration experience strongly preferred Key Deliverables • Canonical logical data model • Spanner physical schemas & index strategies • Transaction design guidelines • Performance readiness assessments • Migration readiness sign-off per domain
Role Descriptions:
Software Engineer (Cloud Spanner Platform) Designs and implements features for distributed systems| manages database storage infrastructure| and improves performance.
Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)| Spanner Focuses on system reliability| automating management processes| and managing on-call rotations to maintain uptime for large-scale production databases.
Engineering Manager| Spanner Migration Leads teams to build tools for transitioning databases and drives adoption of Spanner| providing high-performance SQL capabilities.
Google CareersGoogle Careers 4Common
Qualifications – Skills Education:
Bachelors or Masters in Computer Science or related fields.
Technical Skills:
Experience with distributed computing| large-scale systems design| networking| and data storage.
Databases Expertise in relational databases (SQL) and cloud infrastructure.
Soft Skills Strong leadership| collaboration| and troubleshooting abilities.
Google Careers Google Careers 3Core Focus Areas High Reliability Maintaining 99.999 availability and managing data replication across regions.
Performance Optimization Optimizing query execution| handling TB-scale data| and refining transactional reads writes.
Distributed Systems Working on complex systems that provide strong consistency globally.
Google Cloud Google Cloud 2These roles frequently involve working on cutting-edge database technology at Googles scale.