Google has hired President Obama's former adviser to lead global public policy

Google has hired a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama to lead its global public policy team as it faces increasing scrutiny from European regulators, The New York Times reports.

Caroline Atkinson will join Google in March and be based in Washington.

Atkinson joined the White House in 2011 and left her role as deputy national security adviser last month.

Atkinson graduated from Oxford University and began her career as a journalist for the Washington Post, before moving on to The Economist, and the Times of London.

Prior to joining the Obama Administration, Atkinson was a senior executive at the International Monetary Fund.

Google's ongoing legal battles in Europe mean it's likely that Atkinson will be busy from the off. She'll be tasked with convincing European Union antitrust enforcement officials that Google does not abuse its dominance in web search.

Former presidential advisers are the flavour of the month in Silicon Valley at the moment. Uber appointed David Plouffe, also a former Obama adviser, in August 2014, while Amazon appointed Jay Carney, a former White House press secretary, early last year.