Principal Software Engineer

Help reinvent how advertising outcomes are measured in the AI era. You'll join Microsoft Advertising in building always-on measurement foundations that power performance, trust, and optimization at global scale. You'll work on systems that transform raw conversion events into actionable attribution signals-so advertisers can understand what worked, what didn't, and how to improve as customer journeys evolve.

As a Principal Software Engineer on the Conversion & Attribution engineering team, you will provide technical leadership for our near real-time conversion pipeline and attribution platform-driving architecture, reliability, and privacy-aware measurement across multiple services and scenarios. You'll partner with engineering, product, data science, and privacy/compliance stakeholders to evolve a unified, configurable attribution architecture that enables faster iteration, higher correctness, and consistent measurement across surfaces. You will raise the bar on operational excellence for business-critical services and be a key technical voice in shaping how we measure outcomes responsibly in the era of AI.

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.

• Leads end-to-end technical strategy and architecture for conversion measurement and attribution, aligning stakeholders on goals for latency, correctness, privacy, and long-term platform evolution.
• Authors and drives adoption of cross-service designs (data contracts, identity/joins, deduplication, late-event handling, and backfills) that scale to high-volume, globally distributed traffic.
• Builds and ships critical components in the near real-time conversion/attribution pipeline, focusing on performance, resilience, maintainability, and safe rollouts.
• Defines SLOs/SLIs and operational standards; elevates observability through metrics, dashboards, logging, tracing, and actionable alerts; leads incident reviews and reliability roadmaps.
• Acts as a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI) for key services, establishing operational playbooks, on-call readiness, and engineering best practices that reduce toil and improve MTTR.
• Mentors and grows other engineers through design reviews, technical coaching, and setting a high bar for engineering rigor, testing, and security.
• Partners with privacy, security, and compliance teams to ensure measurement and telemetry data is handled responsibly and supports evolving industry and regulatory requirements.
• Leverages AI tools to boost up engineering productivity and operational efficiency.

Required 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:

• Master'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, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
  • OR 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, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
  • OR equivalent experience.
• Experience leading architecture and delivering production systems across multiple services/teams, including design reviews, dependency alignment, and driving adoption of shared patterns and platforms.
• Deep experience with streaming / near real-time processing and reliability patterns (SLOs/SLAs, backpressure, late events, idempotency, exactly-once/at-least-once tradeoffs, replay/backfill strategies).
• Experience building high-throughput distributed systems and data platforms (e.g., event ingestion, stateful processing, large-scale joins, and low-latency serving) with solid performance and cost discipline.
• Experience with ads measurement / conversion tracking / attribution systems, including privacy- and compliance-aware handling of measurement and telemetry data (e.g., consent, retention, access controls, auditability).
• Track record of operational leadership for tier-0/tier-1 services: incident command, post-incident learning, and driving sustained reliability improvements.
• Ability to translate ambiguous product and business needs into a technical roadmap; communicate effectively with senior technical and non-technical stakeholders.

#MicrosoftAI

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