Germans have a reputation for great engineering - and for knowing how to have a good time. At Google Munich, we’re doing our best to uphold both traditions. Our engineers work on global products and infrastructure, and our sales Googlers work with Enterprise product customers and digital advertisers big and small.
Our engineers have contributed to the development of Chrome, the V8 Java Script Engine, and have worked on user-facing privacy, developer infrastructure, site reliability and enterprise-level business and productivity applications.
We developed Google Dashboard, allowing users more control over their personal settings across our products.
On the sales side, we sell Enterprise products and work with advertisers and agencies on digital marketing strategies and initiatives.
Number of Munich Googlers: More than the number of known moons in our solar system
Some of our conference rooms are named: Linderhof, Marienplatz, Zugspitze
Distance to the Hofbräuhaus, in meters: 350
Google Germany GmbH
Dienerstrasse 12
80331 Munich
Germany
“German engineering” is shorthand for precision and performance, and for good reason. From cameras and coffee machines to audio and automobiles, our country has a tradition of making and marketing some of the finest products in the world.
The tradition continues at Google Munich, where our engineers have worked on Chrome, developer infrastructure, user-facing privacy, internal apps and site reliability, while our sales Googlers partner with advertisers on their digital marketing and sell Enterprise products like Apps, Search Appliance and Google Mini.
Our Googlers come from around the world, and have the freedom make their voice heard regardless of title and act on opportunity without getting bogged down in bureaucracy. Everyone here knows everyone else, making us friendly and highly collaborative. Imagine a start-up, but with more resources and products used by hundreds of millions of people around the globe, and you’ll get the idea.
We also make sure to have fun every day. Our cafeteria is made up to look like a beer garden. We play board and video games, and go on awesome hiking and skiing off-sites. Our engineering and sales teams can get pretty serious about their foosball rivalry. And that’s just the start of it.
Google’s transparent, bottom-up culture gives everyone an unusual amount of freedom and responsibility - and engineers don’t have to go into management to advance in their careers.
- Wieland Holfelder, Engineering Director
We think our location is pretty special. Munich is centrally located, so whether we’re traveling to Budapest, Barcelona, Oslo or Oberstdorf, it’s just a short trip away. Our office is in the heart of Munich, one of Europe’s most beautiful (and livable) cities, near Marienplatz, the Englischer Garten and Neues Rathaus. We’re in a renovated landmark building (Ludwig II, duke of Bavaria, lived here in the 13th century) with a glass roof designed to look like shingles from the outside. We’re smaller than a lot of Google offices, so it’s easy to get to know our fellow Googlers, but we still have a very international feel, with Googlers from countries around the world. And we have lunch with randomly assigned groups of Googlers every Tuesday, making this an unusually tight-knit, collaborative office even by Google standards.
Our leaders are open and transparent, so we always know what the office and the company are up to. We pride ourselves on our lack of hierarchy and bottoms-up culture; even Nooglers (what we call "new Googlers") enjoy lots of freedom and responsibility, and we’re encouraged to seize opportunities to innovate and improve products and processes. And our technical Googlers can make a career doing hands-on engineering work, rather than having to move into management to get ahead.
On the engineering side, we’ve worked on user-facing privacy, developer infrastructure and tools, site reliability and enterprise-level business and productivity applications. We’ve also developed Chrome features and functionality, from privacy controls and enterprise applications to the V8 JavaScript engine. We want Chrome to be built for speed. Just like the autobahn. On the sales side, we sell Enterprise products and work with big and small companies and agencies to formulate and execute on digital marketing strategies using YouTube, AdWords, AdMob and AdSense.
In the office, we have board games and video games, foosball tables and ping-pong tables, lava lamps and beanbag chairs, and a Google logo made out of Bavarian pretzels. We also throw amazing holiday parties. Outside the office, we go on great off-sites like canyoning, hiking to Alpine huts for awesome dinners, skiing at resorts like Garmisch, taking Segway tours of Munich, bow shooting in the forest in Austria, geocaching at nearby lakes and picnicking alongside the Isar River.
We do developer relations for Android and Chrome HTML5. We host tech talks and participate in local developer events. We mentor computer science students in German universities, with an emphasis on developing female engineers. We participate in German Google Developer Day events. And through GoogleServe, we volunteer for activities like renovating a home for foster children and entertaining students at a school for disabled children.
One of our engineers, Damon Kohler, is doing some cool stuff with open source robotics – building an Android Lego NXT rover and an Android-powered automatic cat feeder, and appearing at events like Google I/O and the Maker Faire.
