Principal Software Engineer
Top focus
Overview Online Advertising is one of the fastest growing multi-billion-dollar business on the Internet today. Search engines, web publishers, major ad networks, and ad exchanges are now serving billions of ad impressions per day. Microsoft is innovating rapidly in this space to grow its share of this market by providing the advertising industry with the state-of-the-art online advertising platform and service.
In Microsoft Advertiser Platform team, we are building the marketing solutions for the next generation of e-commerce. As a Principal Software Engineer , you will drive complex missions and multi-team initiatives from conception through production, establish architectural direction, and influence engineering strategy across organizational boundaries.
You will partner closely with product management, design, data science, and engineering teams to translate ambiguous customer and business needs into secure, reliable, and maintainable solutions which helps scale the capabilities of the marketers and help them achieve more.
Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.
Starting January 26, 2026, Microsoft AI (MAI) employees who live within a 50-mile commute of a designated Microsoft office in the U.S. or 25-mile commute of a non-U.S., country-specific location are expected to work from the office at least four days per week.
This expectation is subject to local law and may vary by jurisdiction. Responsibilities Provide hands-on technical leadership for advertiser-facing products and platforms, raising the engineering bar for technical areas like architecture, quality, security, accessibility, performance, and reliability.
Define and drive long-term technical strategy and architecture across frontend, service, and data layers. Lead complex, cross-team initiatives from requirements and design through implementation, release, measurement, and live-site operations.
Build and evolve modern user experiences using React, TypeScript, and related web technologies. Apply customer insights, experimentation, telemetry, and business results to guide technical decisions and product improvements. Identify systemic technical challenges and develop reusable platforms, frameworks, and engineering patterns that benefit multiple teams.
Drive technical alignment across engineering, product, design, and partner organizations while navigating ambiguity and competing priorities. Establish engineering practices for testing, observability, deployment, incident response, and operational excellence.
Anticipate technical risks, resolve complex design and production issues, and make pragmatic trade-offs that support long-term product health. Mentor engineers and technical leaders, strengthen engineering capabilities, and foster an inclusive environment where people can do their best work.
Contribute to broader organizational strategy and influence investment decisions through technical expertise and customer-focused judgment. Qualifications Required/Minimum Qualifications: 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#, Java, JavaScript, or Python.
OR equivalent experience. Other Requirements: Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings: Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter
Preferred Qualifications
- Extensive experience designing, developing, and shipping production software products or services.
- Demonstrated expertise in full-stack development, with substantial experience building complex frontend applications using JavaScript or TypeScript and modern frameworks such as React.
- Experience defining architecture and technical strategy for large-scale products, platforms, or distributed systems.
- Proven ability to lead complex initiatives involving multiple engineering teams and organizational stakeholders.
- Solid software design, coding, debugging, and problem-solving skills.
- Experience delivering secure, reliable, maintainable, and measurable customer-facing solutions.
- Demonstrated ability to operate effectively in ambiguous environments and make sound technical and product trade-offs.
- Effective written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to influence technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Experience with C#/.NET and the design of scalable APIs, services, and distributed systems.
- Experience with Microsoft Azure or another major cloud-computing platform.
- Experience with experimentation, telemetry, data-informed product development, and customer behavior analysis.
- Experience with CI/CD, automated testing, observability, service health, and live-site operations.
- Experience building products for advertising, commerce, enterprise, or other workflow-intensive domains.
- Demonstrated success mentoring senior engineers and developing technical leadership across teams. #MAI #Microsoft_Advertiser This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.
- Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer.
- All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation
- any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances.
- If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.