Principal Software Engineer | Xbox Media (San Francisco, CA)

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

Craft: Job Description: Your Role Within the Kingdom

Do you want to build amazing high-scale backend systems for Advertising using the latest technologies? Are you an excellent communicator who enjoys working with people from several different business units? Can you translate business needs into technical requirements and implementation? If you answered yes, then our Principal Software Engineer role on our Xbox Media Engineering team may be the right role for you! We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to empower groundbreaking mobile advertising technologies to create the next generation of our Publisher Ads Platform. We are an impactful team of problem solvers who are constantly reviewing how and why we do things and learning from each other. We are experimental, trying out new tech and ideas, and willing to do things differently to drive the entire industry forward. We are sociable and fun, and we like to hang out together. We are passionate, some might even say quirky, and while we love what we do, our lives are about more than work. We love games and are obsessed with creating the best player experience! Hybrid This role is anticipated to be a hybrid work position, and the home office for this role is San Francisco, CA.

Responsibilities

• Own engineering outcomes for org-critical systems, platforms, or technical domains
• connect all engineering work to business priorities, product direction, and operational constraints
• Define long-term technical direction for a broad domain — making high-impact trade-offs across architecture, reliability, cost, security, velocity, and organizational adoption
• Build and maintain alignment around technical direction across engineering leadership, product leadership, and adjacent organizations
• Create mechanisms that improve delivery, reliability, and learning across an organization — ensuring teams can execute high-stakes technical work without depending on constant personal intervention
• Guide sequencing and risk management for the most consequential technical initiatives in the org
• Develop Staff-level engineers and emerging technical leaders through mentorship, design review, and engineering standards
• Lead organization-wide technical standards, architecture direction, hiring calibration, and major platform evolution
• Build reusable systems, practices, and frameworks that materially raise engineering leverage across multiple teams

Skills to Create Thrills

• BA/BS degree in Computer Science, or a related technical field, plus 11+ years of relevant professional experience (15+ years total).
• Significant professional software engineering experience, including substantial experience designing and operating large-scale, high-reliability distributed systems.
• Demonstrated ability to set technical direction for a broad domain and drive that direction to outcomes — not just produce recommendations.
• Strong depth in backend engineering: service architecture, APIs, data modeling, reliability engineering, and production operations at scale.
• Experience making high-stakes architecture decisions with company-wide or multi-team consequences, and a track record of building the alignment needed to act on them.
• Ability to evaluate trade-offs across scalability, reliability, cost, security, delivery velocity, and organizational adoption — and communicate those trade-offs clearly to engineers and senior leaders alike.
• Proven experience developing senior engineers and emerging technical leaders; visible impact on the technical capability of the organizations you've worked in.
• Strong working knowledge of the team's production environment (Go, GCP, Cloud Run/GKE, distributed data systems); experience operating systems at significant scale.
• Excellent written and verbal communication: able to explain architecture, risks, and direction in design docs, executive forums, and 1:1 engineering conversations equally well.

Key Attributes

• You operate at the intersection of technical depth and organizational influence — comfortable in both a design review and a leadership trade-off discussion.
• Engineers seek out your opinion; product and leadership trust your framing.
• You think in systems: you anticipate second-order effects across teams, users, operations, and business outcomes before committing a direction.
• Pragmatic and outcome-oriented: you balance ideal architecture with delivery reality and measure success by business and engineering impact, not elegance alone.
• You invest in others seriously — the engineers and technical leaders you've developed are a meaningful part of your career record.
• Comfortable with ambiguity at org scale: you can bring structure to undefined technical problems and create momentum before full clarity exists.
• Strong ownership mindset: you don't drop problems at the edges of your scope; you drive them to resolution or hand them off with full context.

We are committed to working with and providing reasonable assistance to individuals with physical and mental disabilities. If you are a disabled individual requiring an accommodation to apply for an open position, please email your request to [e-mail]. General employment questions cannot be accepted or processed here. We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status, among other characteristics.

Rewards

• Medical, dental, vision, health savings account or health reimbursement account, healthcare spending accounts, dependent care spending accounts, life and AD&D insurance, disability insurance
• 401(k) with Company match, tuition reimbursement, charitable donation matching
• Paid holidays and vacation, paid sick time, floating holidays, compassion and bereavement leaves, parental leave
• Mental health & wellbeing programs, fitness programs, free and discounted games, and a variety of other voluntary benefit programs like supplemental life & disability, legal service, ID protection, rental insurance, and others
• If the Company requires that you move geographic locations for the job, then you may also be eligible for relocation assistance.

Eligibility to participate in these benefits may vary for part time and temporary full-time employees and interns with the Company. You can learn more by visiting https://www.benefitsforeveryworld.com/.

In the U.S., the standard base pay range for this role is $171,100.00 - $316,576.00 Annual. These values reflect the expected base pay range of new hires across all U.S. locations. Ultimately, your specific range and offer will be based on several factors, including relevant experience, performance, and work location. Your Talent Professional can share this role’s range details for your local geography during the hiring process. In addition to a competitive base pay, employees in this role may be eligible for incentive compensation. Incentive compensation is not guaranteed. While we strive to provide competitive offers to successful candidates, new hire compensation is negotiable.

Xbox Media builds the player-first, full-stack monetization technology that powers advertising across Xbox surfaces and ad-supported gameplay. We enable meaningful player engagement, publisher success, and platform growth by delivering trusted, high-quality ad experiences at global scale. Backed by Xbox and Microsoft, our platform blends deep gaming insights, privacy-forward data, and world-class engineering to make Xbox Media the most effective and trusted ad platform in gaming.

Activision Blizzard, Inc. is the world’s largest interactive entertainment company, with operations across North America, Europe, and Asia. We are home to some of the most beloved entertainment franchises including Call of Duty®, Skylanders®, World of Warcraft®, Overwatch®, Diablo®, Candy Crush™, and Bubble Witch™. Our combined entertainment network delights hundreds of millions of monthly active users in 196 countries, making us the largest gaming network on the planet! We’re proud to be recognized as one of FORTUNE’s "100 Best Companies To Work For®” for five consecutive years and have earned a spot on FORTUNE’s "Most Admired Companies," and "Future 50" lists. Our 10,000+ global employees are some of the best and brightest talents across entertainment, media, and technology.

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