Principal Software Engineer, AI Ads

Overview

Microsoft AI is hiring a Principal Software Engineer - AI Ads in Mountain View, California, to help shape the future of AI-powered advertising.

This is a Principal-level individual contributor (IC) role with broad technical ownership and organization-wide influence. You'll define technical strategy while remaining deeply hands-on-designing, developing, optimizing, and operating shopping ads, travel, and product graph infrastructure that powers billions of products and travel offerings worldwide.

The Shopping Ads and Travel Infrastructure team builds global, low-latency streaming and AI systems across languages, markets, and business scenarios. Our platforms enable critical experiences across Bing Search Ads, Copilot, shopping and travel, AI agents, product insights, selection, relevance, modeling, and personalization.

You'll build highly scalable, reliable, and performance-critical systems using information retrieval, distributed systems, large-scale data processing, streaming technologies, LLMs and SLMs, and generative AI. You'll also advance AI-native development through coding agents, agentic engineering, harness engineering, and vibe coding-accelerating delivery while maintaining engineering rigor.

As a Principal IC, you'll make foundational architectural decisions, lead complex initiatives across organizational boundaries, mentor and elevate other engineers, reshape AI-driven development workflows, and translate ambitious ideas into measurable customer, advertiser, and business impact.

Join us in shaping the next era of AI-powered advertising-and building the global commerce and travel infrastructure behind it.

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.

Responsibilities

• Lead the strategy, design, development, and optimization of global, low-latency shopping ads, travel, and product graph systems.

• Partner with scientists, engineers, and product leaders to turn research and prototypes into reliable production systems.

• Advance AI-native development through coding agents, agentic engineering, harness engineering, and vibe coding.

• Drive cross-organizational initiatives, make key architectural decisions, and identify opportunities aligned with Microsoft's commerce and advertising strategy.

• Mentor engineers, raise technical excellence, and reshape AI-driven development workflows.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelors 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:

• Masters Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python

• OR Bachelors Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 12+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python

• OR equivalent experience.

• Extensive experience architecting, developing, and operating highly reliable, massive-scale, globally distributed production systems, particularly big data infrastructure.

• Hands-on expertise in one or more of the following areas: online advertising, information retrieval, large-scale data processing, microservices, distributed systems, real-time streaming technologies such as Kafka, Flink, or Spark Streaming, or AI infrastructure.

• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-team technical strategy, influence key decisions, and align engineering, data science, and product management to turn research and business ideas into production systems in fast-moving, ambiguous environments.

• Hands-on experience with AI-driven development practices, including coding agents, agentic workflows, harness engineering, or AI-assisted software development.

• Solid communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively across globally distributed, multidisciplinary teams.

• Experience building product or knowledge graphs, including product identity, entity resolution, taxonomy, attribute extraction, graph modeling, indexing, and low-latency retrieval at global scale.

• Solid background in computational advertising, recommender systems, search engines, or large-scale commerce platforms.

• Hands-on experience with one or more of the following technologies: .NET, NoSQL databases, Azure, ADLA or ADLS, Azure Data Factory, Airflow, Presto, SQL, Kusto, Docker, Kubernetes, or AI model inference platforms.

• Demonstrated startup and entrepreneurial mindset, including comfort with uncertainty, bias for action, customer focus, continuous learning, and rapid experimentation.

• Ability to quickly evaluate, adopt, and apply emerging AI technologies to real-world engineering challenges.

• Passion for solving complex technical problems and improving system performance, scalability, reliability, and developer productivity.

• Fast learner and ability to independently manage and complete several tasks at once.

Software 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:

https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

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.