Principal Software Engineer

Microsoft

Hybrid

Quick summary

Work type: Hybrid
Location: —
Salary: $142,800–$274,800 / yr
Posted: 88 days ago
Closes: Sep 27, 2026

Market check

Salary context

Above market

How this pay compares to similar roles

Similar $177k

This role $209k

$124k most similar roles pay here $291k

This role pays more than 79% of similar roles. Most pay $145,343–$208,800 — the shaded band above. At the midpoint, this role pays about $209k versus about $177k for comparable roles.

Based on 239 similar postings.

Employer

About Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology leader producing software, hardware, and cloud services including Windows, Office 365, Azure cloud platform, Xbox gaming, and Surface devices. Industry: Software & Cloud Computing

Microsoft currently has 622 open roles on FindRole.

Listed pay typically runs $119,800–$234,700 across 559 roles with salary data.

Most-posted roles

View all roles at Microsoft

At a glance

TL;DR · Principal Software Engineer

Role Posting Log in to save

As a Principal Software Engineer on the Ads Engineering Platform team at Microsoft Advertising, you will lead the design and optimization of high-performance ad-serving systems that process millions of requests per second with ultra-low latency. Your responsibilities include architecting and optimizing end-to-end inference infrastructure for deep learning models and large-scale distributed orchestration across GPU and CPU tiers. You will also profile and optimize performance across the full stack, from CUDA kernels to OS-level scheduling, ensuring cost efficiency and reliability in a globally distributed system. This role requires expertise in NVIDIA Triton Inference Server, CUDA, TensorRT, and real-time data streaming systems like Kafka and Flink, as well as deep knowledge of GPU inference frameworks and low-level system internals for large-scale serving pipelines.

Skills

CUDA NVIDIA_Triton_Inference_Server TensorRT Kafka Flink Spark_Streaming GPU CPU LLM_inference_optimization NVIDIA_TensorRT custom_CUDA_kernels multi-threading NUMA-aware_memory_allocation lock-free_data_structures I/O_stack_tuning DPDK io_uring CPU/GPU_affinity_optimization SLA-based_capacity_forecasting autoscaling performance_telemetry

What you'll do

Design and lead development of high-performance ad-serving systems processing millions of requests per second.
Optimize end-to-end inference infrastructure for GPU-accelerated and CPU-based ranking/pipelines across heterogeneous hardware.
Profile and optimize system performance from CUDA kernels to OS-level scheduling, identifying and mitigating bottlenecks.
Own live-site reliability as DRI, designing telemetry, alerting, and fault-tolerance mechanisms for globally distributed systems.
Mentor and drive architecture reviews, promoting engineering excellence in deep debugging, profiling, and performance optimization.

What we're looking for

Extensive experience in designing and optimizing high-performance, distributed online serving systems.
Hands-on expertise with real-time data streaming systems and multi-region deployment for low-latency services.
Deep knowledge of GPU inference frameworks including NVIDIA Triton Inference Server, CUDA, and TensorRT.
Proven ability to profile and optimize system workloads across CPU and GPU tiers.
Solid understanding of model-serving trade-offs and optimization techniques for deep learning and LLM workloads.
Expertise in low-level system internals such as multi-threading, NUMA-aware memory allocation, and I/O stack tuning.

Similar roles

Principal Software Engineer

The Walt Disney Company

Remote (Santa Monica, CA) +1 80 days ago $184,300–$247,100

Python Java AWS DynamoDB S3 SQS SNS Kinesis Kafka MySQL PostgreSQL Springboot Django CI/CD

Remote

Save

Principal Software Engineer

Oracle

Santa Clara, CA +1 72 days ago $96,800–$223,400

Java Python Linux Docker Kubernetes Terraform CI/CD Prometheus Grafana PostgreSQL AWS Azure Oracle Cloud Infrastructure BMCs NICs SmartNICs ILOMs GPUs Microservices Observability High Availability Security Networking Compute Distributed Systems Firmware Development Testing

Save

Principal Software Engineer

Microsoft

Redmond, WA 50 days ago $142,800–$274,800

C++ C# Windows Subsystem for Linux AI/ML CI/CD Python Docker Kubernetes AWS GitHub Visual Studio PostgreSQL Redis Git Jenkins Terraform Ansible Prometheus Grafana

Save