Max Griffiths uses his computer science skills to keep Google products running smoothly and reliably
Max’s love of maths, physics and geography led him to study a Bachelor of Science specialising in computer science and mathematics at the University of Canterbury. He then interned for Google Photos, before locking in a full-time position in Google’s Cloud Firestore site reliability engineering team as a site reliability engineer.
Every day at work is different for Max. Some days he’s on call for a Google service and responding to issues as they arise, and some days he’s working to improve the reliability of future features. And others? “I’m waist deep in various configuration files to understand how the pieces all fit together to bring everything to our users seamlessly!”
He loves working at Google and says the scale of the company continues to blow his mind.
“At the click of a button, I can ask for more resources than I would have thought possible,” he explains.
If he could go back and give his younger self some advice, he’d say to put more consideration into taking the ‘risky option’. “Be willing to try things you aren’t sure you’ll like. You can always fall back to a ‘safer’ path that you know you enjoy later.”
Watch Max talk about his tech career in the video below:
Max’s study and career path to becoming a site reliability engineer at Google
- Bachelor of Science (Computer Science and Mathematics), University of Canterbury
- Software engineering internship, Google Photos
- Site reliability engineer, Google Cloud Firestore
This profile was brought to you in partnership with Google and first appeared in Careers with STEM: Technology 2023.
