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Snap5K–10K employees

Principal Software Engineer, Ads Platform

Palo Alto, CASalary not listedPosted yesterday

Immigration summary

Visa sponsorship

Highly likelyHigh confidence

This employer sponsors this kind of work repeatedly, and is still filing this year.

326 recent H-1B filings · 143 similar-role filings

View visa evidence

Green card sponsorship

Strong historyHigh confidence

This employer has recently sponsored green cards at scale.

80 recent certified PERM filings · 37 similar-role filings

View green card evidence

Job description

Snap Inc is a technology company. We believe the camera presents the greatest opportunity to improve the way people live and communicate. Snap contributes to human progress by empowering people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together.

The Company operates Snapchat, a visual messaging app that enhances your relationships with friends, family, and the world, and Specs Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary dedicated to making computing more human, in addition to Bitmoji, Saturn, and other digital services.

Snap Engineering teams build fun and technically sophisticated products that reach hundreds of millions of Snapchatters around the world, every day. We’re deeply committed to the well-being of everyone in our global community, which is why our values are at the root of everything we do. We move fast, with precision, and always execute with privacy at the forefront.

We’re looking for a Principal Software Engineer to join the Ads Platform team at Snap.

What you’ll do:

  • Build the next generation ads formats and backend infrastructure and solutions to deliver more clicks and conversion and value for advertisers. 

  • Work end-to-end across innovating new ads product, format ideas, or infrastructure ideas experimentation, analysis and optimization

  • Work across teams to understand product requirements, evaluate trade-offs, and deliver the solutions needed to build innovative products or services

  • Advocate for and apply best practices when it comes to availability, scalability, operational excellence, and cost management

  • Provide technical direction that influences the entire company

  • Work across teams to understand product requirements, evaluate trade-offs, and deliver the solutions needed to support Snap’s performance advertising suite 

  • Technical influence that spans the entire company

  • Utilize AI tools and high velocity engineering workflows to design and ship scalable services while upholding rigorous standards for code correctness, security, and production ready quality code

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities:

  • 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

  • Adaptability in learning and applying evolving AI systems and tools to remain at the forefront of engineering trends and modern development practices

Minimum Qualifications:

  • 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

Preferred Qualifications

  • 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

"Default Together" Policy at Snap: At Snap Inc. we believe that being together in person helps us build our culture faster, reinforce our values, and serve our community, customers and partners better through dynamic collaboration. To reflect this, we practice a “default together” approach and expect our team members to work in an office 4+ days per week.

At Snap, we believe that having a team of diverse backgrounds and voices working together will enable us to create innovative products that improve the way people live and communicate. Snap is proud to be an equal opportunity employer, and committed to providing employment opportunities regardless of race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, or any other protected classification, in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local laws. EOE, including disability/vets.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable law (by example, the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring, where applicable).

Our Benefits: Snap Inc. is its own community, so we’ve got your back! We do our best to make sure you and your loved ones have everything you need to be happy and healthy, on your own terms. Our benefits are built around your needs and include paid parental leave, comprehensive medical coverage, emotional and mental health support programs, and compensation packages that let you share in Snap’s long-term success!

Compensation

In the United States, work locations are assigned a pay zone which determines the salary range for the position. The successful candidate’s starting pay will be determined based on job-related skills, experience, qualifications, work location, and market conditions. The starting pay may be negotiable within the salary range for the position. These pay zones may be modified in the future.

Zone A (CA, WA, NYC):

The base salary range for this position is $276,000-$414,000 annually.

Zone B:

The base salary range for this position is $262,000-$393,000 annually.

Zone C:

The base salary range for this position is $235,000-$352,000 annually.

This position is eligible for equity in the form of RSUs.

If you believe this job description is missing required pay transparency information, please submit a report through this form: Job Description Pay Range Disclosure.

Sponsorship evidence

Why Openbound reached the conclusions above.

Visa sponsorship evidence

Current posting

Silent on sponsorship

Employer H-1B history

326
recent certified H-1B filings
188
new-hire petitions
143
filings for similar roles
273
so far in FY2026

Filed titles like this role: software engineer 4 · software engineer 5 · software engineer 3 · software engineer 6

More evidence details
  • 143 certified H-1B filings for this same role, 188 new-hire petitions across the employer, and 162 new hires already this year
  • 143 certified H-1B filings for this same role
  • 326 recent certified H-1B filings across the employer
  • Still filing this year — 273 filings in FY2026
  • 118 USCIS H-1B new-employment approvals, counted separately from LCA filings
  • Strong filing activity in CA
  • 648 further USCIS approvals for extensions or transfers
  • The posting says nothing about sponsorship either way

Strong filing activity in CA.

Green card sponsorship evidence

Employer PERM history

80
recent certified PERM filings
37
filings for similar roles
50
filings in this location
Certified PERM filings by fiscal year
202344
2024131
202563
202699YTD

Filing history reflects past employer behavior; it isn't a promise for this opening.

All open roles at Snap
How Openbound evaluates sponsorship

Visa history uses official U.S. Department of Labor H-1B LCA disclosure data and USCIS H-1B petition history. Green card history uses DOL PERM disclosure data. Each is read for the employer as a whole, for roles like this one, and for this location, weighted toward the most recent fiscal years.

An employer is matched to its filing entities by verified legal name and reviewed aliases; a match is never made on a name resemblance alone. Where no verified entity can be matched, the page says so and draws no conclusion from the absence. 184 filing titles were examined for this employer.

What this posting states outranks history in both directions, and an employer's published policy outranks past filings. Filing history reflects past behavior; it is not a promise of sponsorship for this opening, and none of this is legal advice.