Principal Ads Platform Engineer: Scale, AI & Impact

Snap Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 276,000 - 414,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

RSU Equity

Comprehensive medical coverage

Job summary

Snap Inc. in the San Francisco Bay Area seeks a Principal Software Engineer to lead the Ads Platform, building next-generation ads formats and backend infrastructure that drive clicks and conversions for advertisers.

You will shape technical direction, mentor engineers, and collaborate across teams to deliver scalable, highly available services while maintaining strong security and production quality standards.

Qualifications

• Bachelors in a 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 + 9+ years; or a PhD + 6+ years.
• 2+ years of experience with technical leadership or domain-expert role.
• Experience in technical leadership/ownership and setting technical direction for engineering projects.
• Experience architecting, designing, and developing distributed systems.

Responsibilities

• Build the next generation ads formats and backend infrastructure to deliver more clicks and conversion for advertisers.
• Work end-to-end across new ads product ideas or infrastructure ideas, including experimentation and optimization.
• Collaborate across teams to understand product requirements, evaluate trade-offs, and deliver needed solutions.
• Advocate for availability, scalability, operational excellence, and cost management.
• Provide technical direction that influences the entire company.
• Support Snap’s performance advertising suite with cross-team collaboration.
• Leverage AI tools and high-velocity engineering workflows to ship scalable services with rigorous quality and security.

Skills

Programming & design

Scale experience

Leadership

Ambiguity resolution

Mentorship

Ads domain

AI systems awareness

Education

Bachelor's in CS/related field

MS/PhD in technical field

Job description

Snap Inc. in the San Francisco Bay Area seeks a Principal Software Engineer to lead the Ads Platform, building next-generation ads formats and backend infrastructure that drive clicks and conversions for advertisers.

You will shape technical direction, mentor engineers, and collaborate across teams to deliver scalable, highly available services while maintaining strong security and production quality standards.