Senior Software Engineer

Posted 2 Days Ago
Be an Early Applicant
2 Locations
In-Office
120K-304K Annually
Senior level
Software • Quantum Computing • Metaverse • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
The Role
Lead architecture and development of a high-scale, low-latency Go-based auction and mediation platform. Drive cross-team technical strategy, evolve bidder adapters and auction logic, improve experimentation, observability, and Azure-native infrastructure, and mentor senior engineers to ensure reliability, performance, and operational excellence.
Summary Generated by Built In
Overview
The Microsoft Advertising Mediation Service (MMS) is the real-time auction and mediation platform that sits at the heart of Microsoft's advertising stack. Built on Go and derived from Prebid Server, MMS processes OpenRTB traffic at global scale across multiple Azure regions, running header-bidding auctions, executing bidder filtration, applying dynamic reserve pricing, and powering experimentation across Microsoft's owned-and-operated and third-party supply (Outlook, MSN, Xandr, LinkedIn, MSAN, and more).
 
We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to set the technical direction for MMS as it scales to the next order of magnitude of traffic, supply types, and auction complexity. This is a deeply technical IC role: you will own architecture decisions that span the request hot path, the experimentation framework (flights/TSGs), bidder adapter ecosystem, and the Azure-native infrastructure that runs it all. You will partner closely with engineering leads, PMs, data science, and partner teams across Microsoft Advertising to shape the roadmap, raise the engineering bar, and mentor senior engineers across the org.
 
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.

Responsibilities

Technical Leadership

  • Own the long-range architecture of the MMS platform: the OpenRTB request hot path, auction engines (best-price, priority, dynamic reserve price, multi-placement), bidder adapter framework, and the experimentation/flights system.
  • Drive cross-team technical strategy with peer principals across Microsoft Advertising — bidders, supply integrations, brand safety, identity, measurement, and billing.
  • Set and enforce engineering standards through design reviews, code reviews, technical RFCs, and mentorship of senior and staff-level engineers.
  • Identify and resolve systemic risks across reliability, latency, cost, and correctness before they reach production.

Service & Platform Development

  • Design and build highly scalable Go services on the MMS platform, with strict latency and availability SLAs measured in single-digit milliseconds and five nines.
  • Evolve the bidder adapter framework to support new supply types (display, native, video) and new integration patterns (server-side header bidding, deal-based, programmatic guaranteed).
  • Improve the auction subsystem — pricing, filtration (L1 brand safety, IP blocks, embargoes), bidder selection, and response shaping — with measurable revenue and quality impact.
  • Strengthen the experimentation framework (flights, traffic sub-groups) so PMs and data science can ship A/B tests safely at high cadence.
  • Improve observability of the request path: structured Event Hub logging, sampling strategies, metrics, and tracing across the bidder fan-out.

Infrastructure & Cloud

  • Drive Azure-native deployment and operational excellence across AKS, ACR, Azure Key Vault, Azure Blob Storage, Azure Event Hubs, and Azure AD.
  • Lead initiatives to reduce cost-per-request, improve cold-start and config-reload behavior, and harden cross-region failover.
    Improve CI/CD on Azure DevOps, including canary, progressive rollout, and automated rollback strategies.

Org-Wide Impact

  • Lead initiatives that make delivery of high-quality software routine and efficient across the full SDLC — from inception and technical design through testing, deployment, and oncall.

Contribute to runbooks, deployment documentation, and oncall readiness

  • Lead efforts to raise the bar on incident response and institutionalize effective post-incident learning.
  • Leverage AI dev tools across the software development lifecycle to raise team-wide engineering productivity.

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 

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.
  • 6+ years of experience building and operating latency-sensitive backend services with strict SLA requirements (P99 measured in milliseconds, five-nines availability).
  • Go — deep production experience, including profiling, GC tuning, concurrency patterns, and performance-sensitive code on the request hot path.
  • OpenRTB / programmatic advertising — hands-on experience with header bidding, real-time bidding, mediation, exchanges, SSPs/DSPs, brand safety, or identity/cookie syncing. Familiarity with Prebid Server or similar auction platforms.
  • Auction systems — experience designing or evolving pricing logic, bidder filtration, dynamic reserve pricing, or floor-price optimization at scale.
  • Kubernetes & Azure — production experience with AKS, ACR, Azure Key Vault, Azure Event Hubs, Azure Blob Storage, Azure Application Insights, and Azure DevOps; comfortable with multi-region, multi-cluster deployments.
  • Distributed systems — solid grasp of consistency trade-offs, fault tolerance, distributed caching, and cross-region replication patterns.
  • Experimentation platforms — experience designing or scaling A/B testing frameworks, feature flags, or controlled rollout systems.
  • Observability — experience with structured logging, high-cardinality metrics, sampling at scale, and event streaming pipelines (Event Hubs, Kafka, Kusto/ADX).
  • Proven record of mentoring senior engineers and driving cross-team technical initiatives to completion.
  • Solid problem-solving skills with a focus on reliability, observability, and system design.

Software Engineering IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $119,800 - $234,700 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 $160,200 - $261,000 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

Software Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $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

Software Engineering IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $142,800 - $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.

Skills Required

  • Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 4+ years technical engineering experience with coding in languages including C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, or Python OR equivalent experience
  • Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements, including passing the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years
  • Master's Degree in Computer Science or related technical field AND 8+ years technical engineering experience OR Bachelor's Degree AND 12+ years technical engineering experience OR equivalent experience
  • 6+ years building and operating latency-sensitive backend services with strict SLA requirements (P99 in milliseconds, five-nines availability)
  • Deep production experience with Go, including profiling, GC tuning, concurrency patterns, and performance-sensitive coding
  • Hands-on experience with OpenRTB / programmatic advertising, header bidding, mediation, exchanges, SSPs/DSPs, or familiarity with Prebid Server
  • Experience designing or evolving auction systems: pricing logic, bidder filtration, dynamic reserve pricing, or floor-price optimization at scale
  • Production experience with Kubernetes and Azure (AKS, ACR, Azure Key Vault, Azure Event Hubs, Azure Blob Storage, Azure Application Insights, Azure DevOps) and multi-region, multi-cluster deployments
  • Distributed systems expertise: consistency trade-offs, fault tolerance, distributed caching, cross-region replication
  • Experience designing or scaling experimentation platforms, A/B testing frameworks, feature flags, or controlled rollouts
  • Observability experience: structured logging, high-cardinality metrics, sampling strategies, and event streaming pipelines (Event Hubs, Kafka, Kusto/ADX)
  • Proven record of mentoring senior engineers and driving cross-team technical initiatives to completion
  • Strong problem-solving skills focused on reliability, observability, and system design

Microsoft Compensation & Benefits Highlights

The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Microsoft and has not been reviewed or approved by Microsoft.

  • Fair & Transparent Compensation Pay is presented as broadly competitive overall, with clear role/level/location variation and an emphasis on using posted ranges and band information for apples-to-apples comparisons.
  • Retirement Support Retirement benefits are described as a standout, highlighted by a strong 401(k) match structure and immediate vesting, plus additional plan features for tax-advantaged saving.
  • Parental & Family Support Family-oriented benefits are portrayed as a meaningful strength, with substantial paid parental leave and added supports like back-up care and adoption/surrogacy assistance.

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