Principal Software Engineer - AI Ads

Overview

Microsoft AI is looking for a Principal Software Engineer - AI Ads, to shape the future of online advertising in Mountain View, CA or Redmond, WA.

You'll lead the design and development of large-scale shopping ads infrastructure that powers billions of products worldwide. This is a rare opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI, big data, and deep learning systems while collaborating with world-class scientists and engineers to deliver solutions at massive scale.

Online advertising is one of the fastest-growing businesses on the Internet today, with about $70 billion of the $600 billion advertising market already online. Search engines, chatbots, web publishers, major ad networks, and ad exchanges serve billions of ad impressions daily and generate terabytes of user event data. This rapid growth has created enormous opportunities as well as technical challenges that demand advanced computational intelligence. Computational Advertising has emerged as a new interdisciplinary field that combines information retrieval, machine learning, large-scale distributed systems, data mining, statistics, operations research, and microeconomics to solve complex problems. At its core, the challenge is to select an optimized set of eligible ads for each user in order to maximize overall utility-capturing expected revenue, user experience, and advertisers' return on investment. Microsoft is innovating rapidly in this space to expand its market share by delivering a state-of-the-art online advertising platform and service.

The Shopping Ads Infrastructure & Algorithm team in Microsoft AI is seeking a Principal Software Engineer - AI Ads, to lead research and development for the next generation of shopping ads infrastructure. In this role, you will design, develop, optimize, and operate the universal product graph infrastructure and manage large-scale datasets that span billions of products in multiple languages worldwide. This product graph powers critical scenarios including Bing Search Ads, Copilot, AI Agents, Product Insights, Selection, Relevance, Modeling, and Personalization. The team leverages deep learning, LLMs/SLMs, AI, NLP, information retrieval, big data, and streaming systems to build high-performance engineering solutions aligned with Microsoft's Commerce Strategy. You will collaborate with leading scientists and engineers across Microsoft's global R&D organization to deliver impactful solutions at massive scale.

At Microsoft AI, you'll have the opportunity to grow your career while tackling some of the hardest problems in machine learning, large-scale distributed systems, and computational advertising. You'll collaborate with world-class researchers and engineers, influence product direction, and take on leadership opportunities that expand your technical and professional impact. Our team builds infrastructure that powers billions of products across the globe, directly shaping the future of shopping and online advertising. By joining us, you'll contribute to cutting-edge AI innovation at massive scale and help transform how users and advertisers connect.

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, MAI employees are expected to work from a designated Microsoft office at least four days a week if they live within 50 miles (U.S.) or 25 miles (non-U.S., country-specific) of that location. This expectation is subject to local law and may vary by jurisdiction.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design, development, and optimization of large-scale shopping ads infrastructure and algorithms.
• Build and maintain the universal product graph spanning billions of products across multiple languages.
• Develop scalable systems for data ingestion, storage, retrieval, and real-time serving at global scale.
• Apply machine learning (ML), nature language processing (NLP), and deep learning (DL) models to improve ad relevance, personalization, and selection.
• Collaborate with scientists and engineers across Microsoft AI to translate research into production systems.
• Drive innovation by identifying technical opportunities that align with Microsoft's Commerce Strategy.
• Mentor and guide engineers, fostering technical competence and collaboration across the team.

Qualifications

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.
• 4+ years of industrial experience building large scale systems and supporting AI models.
• 2+ years of experience with deep learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow), LLMs/SLMs, and AI Agents.
• 2+ years of experience with cloud services, large-scale big data platforms, and streaming/real-time frameworks (e.g., Kafka, Flink, Spark Streaming), and AI infrastructure development.

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

• Committed background in computational advertising, recommender systems, or search engines
• Demonstrated ability to translate high-level vision into detailed, high-quality design and implementation; skilled at integrating both quantitative and qualitative data into decision-making, and effective in both independent and collaborative settings
• Passion for innovation, solving complex problems, and optimizing systems
• Committed to learning and adept at adopting and applying the latest AI technologies to day-to-day work
• Proficient background in computational advertising, recommender systems, or search engines.

#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:
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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.