Principal Software Engineer

We’re looking for a seasoned AdTech expert to help shape the future of our advertising platform. This is a Principal-level role in our Advertising and Partner Analytics space, where you’ll be accountable for scaling a high-performing native advertising system, with the ambitious goal of doubling our current ad revenue. This is about owning the why, influencing the what, and leading the how. You'll be joining at a pivotal moment: we’re evolving our commercial model, and engineering will play a key role in enabling and accelerating that shift.

You’ll bring your deep industry experience to a team of capable engineers who’ve been building and operating this platform for years. We expect you to be the one who helps take it to the next level.

What You’ll Do

• Lead with vision: Define the technical direction of our advertising platform with a focus on scalability, performance, and strategic growth.
  
  
• Drive business impact: Partner directly with product and commercial stakeholders to align engineering decisions with business priorities, especially as we evolve our commercial approach.
  
  
• Optimize for scale: Solve key challenges around efficient inventory delivery, campaign forecasting, audience handling, and yield management.
  
  
• Collaborate on AI-driven optimization: Work closely with our Data Science team to apply machine learning approaches to improve overall ad performance.
  
  
• Mentor and influence: Uplevel the team’s technical depth.
  
  
• Think long-term: Anticipate future opportunities and risks, ensuring architectural decisions support our growth trajectory.
  
  

What We’re Looking For

• Deep, practical experience in AdTech, especially in areas like native advertising, audience segmentation, and yield optimization.
  
  
• A strategic technical leader. Someone who influences not just technical execution but what gets built and why.
  
  
• Experience tackling complex, high-impact engineering problems with clarity and thoughtfulness.
  
  
• A strong foundation (or curiosity) in how AI/ML can be applied to advertising systems, and a collaborative mindset for working with Data Science teams.
  
  
• A natural collaborator who can bridge engineering and business to drive measurable impact
  
  

Skyscanner is a hybrid working company, and most roles can be either Full-Time or Part-Time. We believe that when people meet regularly in person, we are better able to innovate, learn, collaborate, and inspire. We ask people to be in the office on average 8 days per month.

Why Skyscanner? Already a global leader in travel, we want to elevate the way we work to a whole other level. In return, you’ll get meaningful things like medical insurance, health screenings, headspace subscriptions, a home office allowance and the option to buy more holiday. You’ll have the opportunity to work from any country for 4 weeks a year, and 30 days in our other global offices. Everything, in other words, to help you relax and give your best.

For more details on Engineering at Skyscanner, check our Engineering Blog and follow Skyscanner Engineering on Twitter.