Engineering Director, Knowledge Catalog

Note: By applying to this position you will have an opportunity to share your preferred working location from the following: Hyderabad, Telangana, India; Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.Minimum qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 15 years of experience in software engineering or equivalent.
• 10 years of experience leading organizations of engineers.

Preferred qualifications:

• Expertise in AI/ML, including LLMs and vector embeddings, to automate data classification, sensitive data detection, and discovery in multi-cloud environments.
• Architectural expertise in cloud-native data platforms, with a focus on in-place platform modernization to natively support AI-driven, real-time data management experiences without disrupting existing enterprise workloads.
• Expertise in distributed data processing frameworks (e.g., Spark, Flink, BigQuery) and an intuition for how to build a scalable, real-time data foundation that provides high-quality, governed data to AI/ML models at latency and cost goals.

About The Job

Within Google Cloud, Dataplex (now evolving into Knowledge Catalog) is the intelligent data fabric that enables organizations to unify, manage, and govern their data across lakes, warehouses, and data marts. Our mission is to transform data management from a manual, siloed process into a seamless, autonomous, and secure ecosystem that scales with the speed of modern business. This is being done by deeply infusing Generative AI into the Knowledge Catalog platform. This role is central to that mission, defining how we leverage Knowledge Catalog's unique ability to automate data profiling, quality, and lineage to provide a trusted, self-healing, and AI-ready foundation for the entire data lifecycle.

As an Engineering Director, you will be an expert visionary and generalist, leading the technical and architectural reinvention of the Knowledge Catalog platform. You will define and drive the long-term strategic technical priorities for integrating AI as a core competency into our data governance and integration fabric.

In this role, you will be responsible for defining how Generative AI, automated metadata management, and our distributed data mesh architecture will evolve to create a truly autonomous, trusted, and AI-ready data ecosystem. You will employ a hybrid approach of direct technical guidance, mentorship, and risk/growth management. You will act as an escalation point for technical decisions across the team and function as a trusted partner for other C-level leaders in defining strategy and shaping our investment portfolio. Additionally, you will function as a trusted partner and key technical influencer both internally and externally.

Google Cloud accelerates every organization’s ability to digitally transform its business and industry. We deliver enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Google’s cutting-edge technology, and tools that help developers build more sustainably. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems.

Responsibilities

• Work closely with our strategic customers to understand their complex data silos and co-develop our AI-first data management roadmap.
• Partner with C-level leaders to define the strategy for the next generation of data fabrics, ensuring Knowledge Catalog is the backbone of Google Cloud’s data strategy. Build product and UX relationships and collaborate with SRE, Privacy, Security, and Compliance teams.
• Influence thought leaders across Google Cloud (e.g., Vertex AI, BigQuery) and Google (e.g. DeepMind) to align roadmaps, ensuring the data fueling Google’s AI models is governed, high-quality, and seamlessly accessible.
• Lead Knowledge Catalog’s AI-first long-term strategy, defining roadmaps for autonomous governance, AI metadata discovery, and self-healing pipelines while maintaining technical excellence.
• Manage complex tradeoffs such as LLM integration (i.e. rewrite vs. encapsulate), balancing AI automation with manual controls, and transitioning between centralized and data mesh architectures.

Google is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. See also Google's EEO Policy and EEO is the Law. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know by completing our Accommodations for Applicants form .