Principal Software Engineer, Ads Data Platform

Job ID: 200044971Posted: 2026-07-27Location: United States, Washington, RedmondSalary: USD $142,800 - $274,800 per yearEmployment type: Full-TimeWork site: 4 days / week in-officeRole type: Individual ContributorTravel: Less than 25%Profession: Software EngineeringDiscipline: Software EngineeringCompany: MicrosoftOverviewThe Ads Data Platform Team, part of Microsoft AI (Artificial Intelligence), is hiring a Principal Software Engineer - Big Data Systems.  This role is available in Redmond, WA  Our team powers the backbone of Microsoft’s global ads marketplace—gathering, storing, and enriching over half a trillion ad-serving events every day. We build data platforms that fuel business analytics, machine learning models, and real-time reporting at massive scale. If you’re passionate about solving complex problems and driving innovation, this is the place for you. As part of our team, you’ll: Design and operate high-scale, high-performance systems that process billions of events through near-real-time and offline pipelines. Build data applications that directly impact Microsoft Ads’ double-digit annual growth. Work on cutting-edge technologies in distributed systems, machine learning, and big data. 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. ResponsibilitiesWork with BingAds stakeholders to determine requirements for new features to drive up Ads business. Create system design for feature requirements. Assure system meets security and compliance requirements and expectations. Creates a clear and articulated plan for testing and assuring quality solutions. Implement the features with high efficiency, extensibility, diagnosability, reliability, and maintainability with few defects. Reviews code of product to assure it meets the team's and Microsoft’s quality standards, is reliable and accurate, and is appropriate for the scale of the product feature. Maintain operations of live service as issues arise on a rotational, on-call basis. Identifies solutions and mitigations to simple and complex issues and escalates as necessary. Acts as a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI) working on call to monitor system/product feature/service for degradation, downtime, or interruptions. Responds within Service Level Agreement (SLA) timeframe. Escalate issues to appropriate owners. Build knowledge, share new ideas, and share pinpoints of engineering tool gaps to improve software developer tools to support other programs, tools, and applications to create, debug, and maintain code for product features. Contribute to the development of automation within production and deployment of a product feature. Profile and analyze distributed system performance and capacity bottlenecks. Propose and implement solutions to improve system latency and capacity to meet BingAds online serving requirements. QualificationsRequired 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 PythonOR equivalent experience.Preferred Qualification:Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related technical field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, Scala, Java C#, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience. 8+ years’ experience in Distributed Systems and Big Data Technologies such as Spark, Hadoop, HDFS, Kafka, Flink, Scala. Experience in: Azure Machine learning and online system design, implementation and qualification. # Bigdata#MicrosoftAISoftware Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $274,800 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $188,000 - $304,200 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: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, or 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.