While Google is not revealing how many jobs it plans to add to its Boulder offices, officials with the company say the biggest projects the Colorado team is working on are Google Chrome, Google Earth, a digital billing system for online consumers and Google Apps.

Google has based its operations on Pearl Street in Boulder since 2007 after it bought local company @Last Software. Recently, it leased more space including a 16,000-square-foot office and when it moves in, the team will occupy a total of three buildings in downtown.

Included in all that space is a rock-climbing wall and pool table, something officials tout as tools for an open and unique work environment.

"People are free to take their own breaks so overall people work very, very hard just like most software engineering places, but we're a flat open environment," Site Director Scott Green said. "They're professional folks, they're creative folks and we want them to be able to work hard and play hard. We want them to be happy."

Green says employees are free to make their own schedule and can also work from home but during the core hours of 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. most employees will work together in a group and many are on the same level.

"We have teams working together and you'll see in our office an open collaboration so people are free to talk about their projects. We don't have a lot of manager types so its software engineers developing software," Green said.

The workplace model seems to be working. Employees say the freedom makes them more productive throughout the work day.

"I'll take a walk around the building or come down to the rock climbing wall when I need to think creatively about something for a while," Software Engineer Jay Gengelbach said.

Some employees said they forget to take vacations because they like being at work so much.

"It's a lot of fun. I think it's pretty much the best place in the world to work as a software engineer. You've got challenging problems to work on all day long and you're working with the brightest minds in the field," Gengelbach said.

It is likely the work in the software engineering field will continue to grow, according to Green, who says it will also continue to diversify.

"It used to be kind of a boring app environment, and software engineering these days has been a lot more focused on consumer applications, which a much broader universe of people can embrace and use. I think that trend is going to continue - social, mobile, the immersive Internet," he said.

For more information on finding employment with the Boulder offices, check out the Google Jobs page.

(KUSA-TV © 2011 Multimedia Holdings Corporation)