Online advertising is one of the fastest-growing industries, contributing around $70 billion of a $600 billion market, with billions of ad impressions served daily and terabytes of user data generated. This rapid expansion presents both immense opportunities and technical challenges that demand intelligent, scalable systems and real-time data processing at massive scale. If you're passionate about architecting and maintaining next-generation platforms that power Microsoft’s multi-billion-dollar advertising business, this is the team for you. You'll design and evolve complex systems, apply AI and modern technologies to solve real-world engineering problems, and collaborate across Ads and Bing teams to drive impactful innovation. We’re a fast-paced, inclusive team that values learning, ownership, and solving deep technical problems at scale.We are looking for a self-motivated Backend
Senior Software Engineer
to join our dynamic Microsoft Advertising Monetize Engineering team within the Microsoft AI organization. Our team focuses on building highly scalable distributed systems, leveraging microservice architecture, optimizing system performance. As a member of our team, you will participate in all stages of our engineering lifecycle, from initial research and discovery to designing and delivering features end-to-end. You’ll work on systems that process massive volumes of data with strict latency and reliability requirements. You’ll collaborate with product managers, data scientists, and engineers across disciplines to deliver impactful solutions that scale globally. We’re looking for engineers who are curious, collaborative, and passionate about solving complex technical challenges. If you thrive in fast-paced environments, care deeply about engineering excellence, and want to build systems that make a measurable impact—this is the team for you.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
- Designs and builds low-latency, high-throughput systems; collaborates across teams to drive technical initiatives; participates in code reviews to ensure high-quality, scalable, and reliable services; mentors junior engineers; and owns product vision, driving new investments and innovations.
- Creates, implements, optimizes, debugs, refactors, and reuses code to establish and improve performance and maintainability, effectiveness, and return on investment (ROI).
- Drives identification of dependencies and the development of design documents for a product, application, service, or platform.
- Leverages subject-matter expertise of product features and partners with appropriate stakeholders (e.g., project managers) to drive a workgroup's project plans, release plans, and work items.
- Acts as a Designated Responsible Individual (DRI) and guides other engineers by developing and following the playbook, working on call to monitor system/product/service for degradation, downtime, or interruptions, alerting stakeholders about status and initiates actions to restore system/product/service for simple and complex problems when appropriate.
- Proactively seeks new knowledge and adapts to new trends, technical solutions, and patterns that will improve the availability, reliability, efficiency, observability, and performance of products while also driving consistency in monitoring and operations at scale.
Qualifications
Required Qualifications:
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
- OR equivalent experience.
- Proficiency in data structures and algorithms, with a solid grasp of problem solving and system design principles.
- Hands-on experience with distributed systems, real-time data processing, and streaming platforms like Kafka or Event Hubs.
- Familiarity with cloud platforms (preferably Azure), including services for compute, storage, monitoring, and diagnostics.
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines, version control systems (e.g., Git), and build tools.
- Knowledge of observability practices, including telemetry, structured logging, and alerting systems.
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 6+ 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 8+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including, but not limited to, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python
- OR equivalent experience.
- Experience being a collaborative team player with curiosity, a growth mindset, and a solid sense of responsibility.
- Working knowledge of any other cloud service.
- Demonstrated ability to work in collaborative, cross-functional teams, and contribute to high-quality, maintainable codebases.
- Excellent skills in design, debugging and problem solving.
- Proven experience in shipping production-quality code in fast-paced environments.
- 6+ years of hands-on experience in real-time data delivery platforms, distributed systems, big data processing pipelines, or large-scale applications.
- Exposure to AI/ML concepts and practical application of AI tools to solve modern engineering challenges.
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Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, 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 and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.
