Principal Backend Engineer - High-Scale Ads Platform (Hybrid)

Activision Blizzard Inc.; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 171,000 - 317,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision coverage

HSA/HRA options

401(k) with company match

Paid holidays & vacation

Mental health programs

Free and discounted games

Job summary

Activision Blizzard, Inc. is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for the Xbox Media Engineering team in San Francisco. You will own high-scale backend systems for advertising, translate business needs into technical requirements, and drive architectural direction across the org.

You will mentor senior engineers, lead platform evolution, and ensure delivery reliability while balancing cost and velocity. This hybrid role emphasizes collaboration across business units and industry-leading player

Qualifications

• BA/BS degree in Computer Science or related field with 11+ years of experience (15+ total).
• Significant experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems.
• Ability to set technical direction for a broad domain and drive outcomes.
• Strong backend depth: service architecture, APIs, data modeling, reliability and production operations at scale.
• Experience making high-stakes architecture decisions with cross-team impact.
• Ability to evaluate trade-offs across scalability, reliability, cost, security, and delivery velocity.
• Proven track record developing senior engineers and technical leaders.
• Excellent written and verbal communication for design docs and executive discussions.

Responsibilities

• Own engineering outcomes for org-critical systems or platforms.
• Align engineering work with business priorities and product direction.
• Define long-term technical direction and trade-offs across architecture, reliability and cost.
• Build alignment across engineering, product leadership, and adjacent teams.
• Improve delivery, reliability, and learning through scalable processes.
• Guide sequencing and risk management for high-impact initiatives.
• Mentor staff engineers and emerging technical leaders.
• Lead architectural standards and major platform evolution.
• Create reusable systems and frameworks to raise engineering leverage.

Skills

Backend engineering

Distributed systems

Technical leadership

Go

GCP

Architecture decisions

Mentorship

Communication

Education

BA/BS in Computer Science

Tools

Go

GCP

Cloud Run/GKE

Job description

Activision Blizzard, Inc. is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for the Xbox Media Engineering team in San Francisco. You will own high-scale backend systems for advertising, translate business needs into technical requirements, and drive architectural direction across the org.

You will mentor senior engineers, lead platform evolution, and ensure delivery reliability while balancing cost and velocity. This hybrid role emphasizes collaboration across business units and industry-leading player