Principal Software Engineer | Xbox Media (San Francisco, CA)

About the role

Do you want to build amazing high-scale backend systems for Advertising using the latest technologies? Are you an excellent communicator who enjoys working with people from several different business units? Can you translate business needs into technical requirements and implementation? If you answered yes, then our Principal Software Engineer role on our Xbox Media Engineering team may be the right role for you! We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to empower groundbreaking mobile advertising technologies to create the next generation of our Publisher Ads Platform. We are an impactful team of problem solvers who are constantly reviewing how and why we do things and learning from each other. We are experimental, trying out new tech and ideas, and willing to do things differently to drive the entire industry forward. We are sociable and fun, and we like to hang out together. We are passionate, some might even say quirky, and while we love what we do, our lives are about more than work. We love games and are obsessed with creating the best player experience! Xbox Media builds the player-first, full-stack monetization technology that powers advertising across Xbox surfaces and ad-supported gameplay. We enable meaningful player engagement, publisher success, and platform growth by delivering trusted, high-quality ad experiences at global scale. Backed by Xbox and Microsoft, our platform blends deep gaming insights, privacy-forward data, and world-class engineering to make Xbox Media the most effective and trusted ad platform in gaming.

Responsibilities

• Own engineering outcomes for org-critical systems, platforms, or technical domains; connect all engineering work to business priorities, product direction, and operational constraints.
• Define long-term technical direction for a broad domain — making high-impact trade-offs across architecture, reliability, cost, security, velocity, and organizational adoption.
• Build and maintain alignment around technical direction across engineering leadership, product leadership, and adjacent organizations.
• Create mechanisms that improve delivery, reliability, and learning across an organization — ensuring teams can execute high-stakes technical work without depending on constant personal intervention.
• Guide sequencing and risk management for the most consequential technical initiatives in the org.