Principal Software Engineer
Microsoft
Redmond, Washington, U.S.
Full-Time
Posted Aug 25, 2025
Up to 50% work from home
Compensation
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About the role
We are looking for an experienced Principal Software Engineer to join the Ads Engineering team and help advance the core capabilities of our Ads serving stack.
Responsibilities
- Design and develop large-scale, distributed systems—including CPU and GPU ranking platforms—to support real-time processing of millions of ad requests per second with high efficiency, extensibility, diagnosability, reliability, and maintainability.
- Lead architecture discussions, create technical design documents, and drive end-to-end solution planning—identifying system dependencies, performance optimizations, and security/compliance requirements across interconnected services.
- Implement features and enhancements with a focus on code quality, maintainability, and scalability; conduct thorough code reviews to uphold Microsoft engineering standards and ensure solutions are production-ready.
- Serve as a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI) for live-site operations on a rotational on-call basis, proactively identifying, resolving, and escalating service degradations or interruptions to maintain high availability.
- Guide testing strategies and quality assurance plans, including unit tests, automation, and telemetry-based diagnostics to validate assumptions, ensure reliability, and drive continuous improvement in service performance.
- Mentor engineers on software engineering best practices, reusable patterns, and tooling; lead efforts to improve performance through debugging, refactoring, experimentation, and instrumentation at scale.
- Drive engineering excellence through compliance with global and local regulations, investment in modern tools and trends, and close collaboration with partner teams to deliver secure, performant, and customer-aligned ad-serving solutions.
Requirements
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 6+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C# or Python
- OR equivalent experience.
Benefits
- Health insurance
- 401k matching
- Flight privileges
- Discounts on products and services
- Savings and investments
- Maternity and paternity leave
- Generous time away
- Giving programs
- Opportunities to network and connect
About the Company
Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
Job Details
Salary Range
$139,900 - $274,800/yearly
Location
Redmond, Washington, U.S.
Employment Type
Full-Time
Original Posting
View on company website