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Garrett Jones

@garrettjones

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Senior software engineer specializing in LLM-driven search and API systems.

United States

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What I'm looking for

I seek senior engineering roles applying LLMs and ML to search or API products, with opportunities for technical leadership and impact.

I am a senior software engineer with deep expertise in large-scale search systems, APIs, and applied machine learning. I have led feature design, prototyping, and production launches at major technology companies, focusing on practical LLM applications and scalable API design.

At Google I led and contributed to multiple projects: fine-tuning LLMs for product-usecase snippets, redesigning product search retrieval flows to improve relevance, and building internal analysis tools in JavaScript, Python, and TypeScript. I have bootstrapped APIs and led cross-team integrations for Cloud Billing and client libraries.

Earlier roles at Amazon and other companies include architecting discovery systems, improving ML-based product categorization, re-architecting services for scalability, and mentoring engineers. I consistently drive engineering best practices, runtime and dependency improvements, and measurable product quality gains.

I seek to apply my combination of hands-on engineering, technical leadership, and ML/LLM experience to solve product search and API problems that impact large user bases and business outcomes.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Staff Software Engineer

Current

Google

Jun 2024 - Present (1 year 4 months)

Fine-tuned LLMs and led small teams to improve product search relevance and surfacing, redesigned product search retrieval flow to significantly improve relevance, and built internal analysis and prototype tools to accelerate deployment.

Large Language Models Python TypeScript JavaScript Search Relevance System Design Team Leadership Data Pipelines

Tech Lead / Manager

Google

Jul 2022 - Jun 2024 (1 year 11 months)

Managed a team of 3–6 engineers, mentored for promotions, and led integration of an LLM-based term-level match feature into Google Search while overseeing visual quality projects.

People Management Mentoring Large Language Models Integration Python

Staff Software Engineer

Google

Apr 2019 - Jul 2022 (3 years 3 months)

Designed and launched the Cloud Billing Budget API to Alpha/Beta, reviewed 150+ Cloud APIs for launch, drove API redesigns and increased billing API clarity and adoption.

API Design C++API Review Technical Leadership

Senior Software Engineer

Google

Oct 2016 - May 2019 (2 years 7 months)

Delivered Java Google Cloud client libraries to GA, led multi-language client code generator work used by >90k projects, and published best practices to resolve Java dependency conflicts.

Java client libraries Open Source Bazel Dependency Management API Clients

Software Engineer III

Google

Jun 2015 - Sep 2016 (1 year 3 months)

Built an API client code generator (proto3/gRPC) supporting Java and PHP, implemented batching/retry support and sample code generation for client libraries.

Java PHP gRPC Proto3 client libraries Testing Automation

Senior Software Engineer

Amazon.com

Nov 2011 - Jun 2015 (3 years 7 months)

Led re-architecture and implementation of a brand selection discovery system, improved ML categorization accuracy from 80% to 89% with dramatic memory reduction, and led cross-department technical reviews.

Ruby on Rails Java Python Machine Learning SQL Technical Leadership

Software Engineer

Amazon.com

Jan 2007 - Nov 2011 (4 years 10 months)

Launched new use cases in a legacy C++ service, optimized performance (reduced latency 6x), improved database load and testing/coding practices across teams.

C++Performance Optimization SQL System Design Java Mentoring Testing

Software Engineer

PC-Doctor

Apr 2004 - Jan 2007 (2 years 9 months)

Extended Linux system information product in C/C++, wrote hardware diagnostic providers, used SWIG to generate JNI bindings, and optimized collection time by two thirds.

C++SWIG Performance Optimization Java Build Systems

Assistant Programmer

University of California, Davis

Jan 2000 - Mar 2004 (4 years 2 months)

Developed Visual C++ utilities for image capture hardware, implemented image analysis tools and a neural network visualization program, and improved algorithm performance.

C++Image Processing Neural Networks

Programming Intern

Infineon Technologies

Jun 2000 - Oct 2000 (4 months)

Developed a Perl/Tk GUI for chip design workflows, optimized wave analysis routines, and interfaced Perl with C for performance improvements.

Perl Unix C++Performance Optimization

Education

Degrees, certifications, and relevant coursework

University of Washington

Professional Master's Program in Computer Science, Computer Science

Grade: 3.97

Completed the Professional Master's Program in Computer Science with coursework in NLP, AI, and Machine Learning; graduated March 2025 with a 3.97 GPA.

University of California, Davis

Bachelor of Science; Bachelor of Arts, Computer Science; Linguistics

Grade: Overall: 3.76; CS: 3.91

Graduated March 2004 with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and a Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics; overall GPA 3.76 and Computer Science GPA 3.91.