Principal Software Engineer, Ads Platform

Snap Snap · Consumer · Palo Alto, CA +6

Principal Software Engineer role focused on building next-generation ad formats and backend infrastructure for Snap's advertising platform. Requires strong software design, distributed systems experience, and technical leadership, with a focus on scalability, operational excellence, and cost management within the ads domain.

What you'd actually do

  1. Build the next generation ads formats and backend infrastructure and solutions to deliver more clicks and conversion and value for advertisers.
  2. Work end-to-end across innovating new ads product, format ideas, or infrastructure ideas experimentation, analysis and optimization
  3. Work across teams to understand product requirements, evaluate trade-offs, and deliver the solutions needed to build innovative products or services
  4. Advocate for and apply best practices when it comes to availability, scalability, operational excellence, and cost management
  5. Provide technical direction that influences the entire company

Skills

Required

  • Excellent programming and software design skills, including debugging, performance analysis, and test design
  • Proven track record of operating highly-available systems at scale
  • Ability to proactively learn new concepts and technology and apply them at work
  • Skilled at solving ambiguous problems
  • Strong collaboration and mentorship skills
  • Ads domain expertise and a strong interest in Ads
  • Bachelors in technical field such as computer science, mathematics, statistics or equivalent years of experience
  • 10+ years of post-Bachelor’s software development experience; or a Master’s degree in a technical field + 9+ year of post-grad software development experience; or a PhD in a related technical field + 6+ years of post-grad software development experience
  • 2+ years of experience with technical leadership or acting as the domain-expert to a technical organization
  • Experience in technical leadership/ownership and setting technical direction for engineering projects
  • Experience architecting, designing, and developing distributed systems

Nice to have

  • Experience in technical leadership/ownership and setting technical direction for engineering projects
  • Proven track record of delivering large scale projects in attribution and measurement
  • Experience operating highly-available systems at significant scale
  • Experience with backend services or distributed systems
  • Ads domain experience

What the JD emphasized

  • technical leadership
  • technical direction
  • Ads domain expertise