Principal Software Engineer · Microsoft
I design and build large-scale distributed systems, drawing on experience with services built to support billions of users and devices. I also teach, mentor, and lead an engineering study group.
My current work is in Azure Core, on Policy and Governance. Before that, I worked on security data, device updates, Windows Update, and services for Amazon’s online store.
I came to software engineering through mathematics, and teaching has remained part of my work. I work full time as an engineer. In the future, I would like to combine teaching with technical consulting: helping companies and public institutions design and review software systems and improve their development practices.
My work at Microsoft and Amazon has given me experience designing and building large-scale distributed systems for data processing, software distribution, and customer-facing services. These examples show the kinds of systems I have worked on and my part in building them.
Microsoft · 2025–present
I design and build services for Azure Policy, helping customers govern their Azure resources. My role includes architecture, service design, and implementation.
The implementation is primarily in C#, working with Azure and Cosmos DB.
Microsoft · 2024–2025
I worked on distributed data ingestion for a security data platform, including integration with Microsoft Entra and other security data sources.
Much of the implementation was in C#, working with Azure Data Factory and data lakes.
Amazon · 2022–2024
I maintained and extended the product rendering service used in Amazon’s online store, working on reliability, performance, and new features.
I also designed interfaces and integration with an experimentation platform. The work used Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, and AWS.
Microsoft · 2018–2022
I led architecture and service design for an Azure service that publishes, processes, and distributes updates to IoT devices.
I designed the API specification and worked on the official SDKs for C#, Java, Python, Go, and TypeScript. This included both the service itself and the contracts developers use to work with it.
Microsoft · 2009–2018
On Windows Update, I worked on backend services and performance optimization using distributed caching. Later, I designed cloud services for publishing and distributing Windows and Microsoft Store updates, and implemented algorithms to select device-driver updates.
In the future, I would like to spend more time teaching software engineering.
I would draw on around 30 years in software development, including my work at Microsoft and Amazon, to connect these topics with the decisions engineers encounter at work.
I currently lead an Engineering Study Group at Microsoft. Earlier teaching included developer courses at the European Institute of IT Education, introductory programming at high school, and mathematics seminars during my doctorate.
My professional résumé brings together my employment history, responsibilities, technical experience, and education.
Read the full résuméFor professional conversations about software engineering or teaching, you can find me on LinkedIn.
David Pokluda on LinkedIn