# Principal Software Engineer

**Company**: Microsoft
**Location**: Redmond
**Work arrangement**: onsite
**Experience**: senior
**Job type**: full-time
**Salary**: USD $139,900 – $274,800 per year
**Category**: Engineering
**Industry**: Technology
**Ticker**: MSFT
**Wikidata**: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2283

**Apply**: https://microsoft.ai/job/principal-software-engineer-26/
**Canonical**: https://yubhub.co/jobs/job_930ee536-a54

## Description

## Summary

Microsoft are looking for a talented Principal Software Engineer at their Redmond office. This role sits at the heart of transforming digital advertising through intelligent automation and large-scale optimization. You'll work directly with leadership to shape the company's direction in the digital advertising market.

## About the Role

Our team is at the forefront of transforming digital advertising through intelligent automation and large-scale optimization. We design and build the auto-bidding platform that powers real-time ad auctions across Microsoft's marketplaces—leveraging cutting-edge AI, machine learning, and large-scale distributed systems to bid on behalf of millions of advertisers. Engineers and scientists work hand-in-hand, blending algorithmic innovation, reinforcement learning, and large-scale data pipelines to create the intelligence that drives Microsoft Advertising's success.

## Accountabilities

- Collaborate with data scientists, ML engineers, and product teams to define requirements for agentic AI-driven bidding capabilities that observe, reason, and adapt autonomously.

- Architect and implement the next-generation agentic bidding platform, enabling AI agents to monitor marketplace signals, interpret advertiser and user behavior, and continuously optimize bidding strategies.

## The Candidate we're looking for

**Experience:**

- 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.

**Technical skills:**

- 4+ years of hands-on experience with large-scale streaming platforms such as Apache Spark or Flink.

- 4+ years of experience as a technical lead, including mentoring and guiding engineers.

**Personal attributes:**

- Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role.

## Benefits

- Software Engineering IC5 – The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $139,900 – $274,800 per year.

- Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation.

## Skills

### Required
- C
- C++
- C#
- Java
- JavaScript
- Python
- Apache Spark
- Flink

### Nice to have
- Machine learning
- Reinforcement learning
- Data pipelines