Picture messaging service Snapchat said Tuesday it had hired Peter Magnusson as senior vice president of engineering. He was formerly an engineering director at Google Inc.

Magnusson and as many as 50 more new engineering hires will be working to upgrade the technology behind Snapchat’s disappearing image app, Magnusson told the Wall Street Journal report. He said developers will be using Google’s App Engine, for which he was the lead engineer, and others to continue building out the app’s infrastructure.

The hiring comes as the Venice company has beefed up its senior ranks in recent months. In December, it hired Emily White away from her senior role at Facebook to serve as chief operating officer, and in September it hired Timothy Sehn, formerly Amazon.com’s engineering director.

Snapchat is also looking for ways to further bolster the app’s security. The company apologized last month for massive data breaches in December.