Principal Software Engineer

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We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Principal Software Engineer to join our team in Mountain View, CA or Redmond, WA. In this role, you will bring exceptional design and development expertise, with a solid background in large-scale distributed systems, cloud computing platforms, high-performance data processing infrastructure, and machine learning training and inference pipelines. As a key technical leader, you will drive the vision, architecture, and implementation of our next-generation bidding platform and pipelines. Your work will have a direct impact on the experience of our advertisers and will play a critical role in increasing revenue across Bing Ads.

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.

Required Qualifications:

• 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, C#, Java, Scala, or Python
  
  • OR equivalent experience.
    
• 4+ years of hands-on experience with large-scale streaming platforms such as Apache Spark or Flink.
  
• 4+ years of experience in designing, building, and maintaining machine learning modeling systems and pipeline.
  
• 4+ years of experience as a technical lead, including mentoring and guiding engineers.

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:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
  
  • OR related technical field AND 12+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C#, Java, Scala, or Python
    
  • OR Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 10+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C#, Java, Scala, or Python
    
  • OR equivalent experience.
    
• 7+ years of experience developing and deploying large-scale distributed systems in production environments.
  
• 7+ years of hands-on experience in machine learning operations (MLOps), including pipeline automation, monitoring, and lifecycle management.
  
• 5+ years of hands-on experience with large-scale streaming platforms such as Apache Spark or Flink.
  
• Domain knowledge of auto-bidding systems or advertising technologies.
  

Software Engineering IC6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $163,000 - $296,400 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 $220,800 - $331,200 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

Microsoft will accept applications and processes offers for these roles on an ongoing basis.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

#MicrosoftAI

• Collaborate closely with data scientists and engineers to architect and develop the auto-bidding platform and associated pipelines.
• Design the platform to align with evolving advertiser product requirements, ensuring high-quality, timely delivery of features and enhancements.
• Build and optimize high-performance, scalable, and robust auto-bidding applications leveraging machine learning models both offline and online scenarios.
• Develop systems that enable reproducibility and traceability across modeling, optimization, and pacing components within the auto-bidding ecosystem.
• Implement large-scale data validation and quality assurance frameworks to ensure accuracy and consistency across all data inputs and outputs.
• Design and maintain comprehensive monitoring and alerting systems to ensure the reliability and performance of data pipelines and bidding applications.
• Construct scalable data pipeline to support rapid experimentation, real-time dashboards, deep insights for decision-making, and AI agentic workflows for automating analysis.