Dawid Kala
Miami,FL
Summary
Staff software engineer specializing in high-performance distributed systems and large-scale production infrastructure. Experienced in C++ and multithreaded systems, with a track record of designing and operating reliable, high-throughput services at scale.
Overview
14
14
years of professional experience
Work History
Principal Software Engineer
Microsoft
03.2023 - Current
- Led architecture and reliability improvements for critical production services powering AI-driven support experiences used by millions of external users, strengthening system stability and operational resilience across multiple service layers.
- Designed and operated high-availability distributed services with strict reliability and SLA requirements, introducing engineering review mechanisms that improved incident response quality and reduced production resolution times.
- Delivered end-to-end development of Assist Search infrastructure, enabling AI-driven support experiences on support.microsoft.com and operating services handling large-scale external traffic.
- Modernized core platform infrastructure by migrating services to .NET Core and containerized environments, improving deployment performance, reliability, and long-term maintainability.
- Led migration of flagship services to Kubernetes hosting platform, defining architecture strategy and coordinating multi-team execution to increase platform reliability and operational consistency.
- Introduced engineering tooling and workflows that improved code quality and development efficiency across dozens of repositories, significantly increasing automated code review adoption.
- Provided staff-level technical leadership during a large organizational transition, stabilizing production systems, mentoring engineers, and maintaining platform reliability during periods of rapid change.
Senior Software Engineer
Microsoft
03.2020 - 03.2023
- Led architecture and infrastructure design for the MarketWatch and Term Studio platform redesign, introducing modular infrastructure-as-code and shared service libraries that significantly improved production reliability and deployment consistency.
- Designed cross-service architecture by introducing a dedicated GraphQL layer to decouple frontend systems from backend services, simplifying system interactions and accelerating multi-team development across the platform.
- Led containerization and platform migration initiatives across core services, improving system portability, deployment reliability, and infrastructure efficiency while reducing compute costs by up to 60%.
- Served as lead engineer for MarketWatch 2.0 and Term Studio, delivering large-scale platform modernization under aggressive timelines and replacing legacy systems supporting high-impact production workflows.
- Executed seamless ownership transfer of a critical production service portfolio across organizational boundaries, maintaining full SLA stability while implementing improved documentation, monitoring, and operational processes.
Software Engineer II
Microsoft
05.2016 - 03.2020
- Reduced production telemetry costs by ~$480K/year by redesigning monitoring and alerting architecture, migrating high-volume telemetry pipelines to Geneva and implementing SLA-driven alerting and incident response.
- Architected next-generation publishing platform and microservices foundation, designing the Templates Publishing Cluster with service isolation, dependency validation, and scalable service boundaries to replace legacy monolithic systems.
- Stabilized large-scale production systems under evolving platform and security constraints by modernizing authentication flows, implementing automated OS upgrade pipelines, and maintaining service continuity across major infrastructure changes.
- Built modern production operations framework by defining service-level objectives, standardizing alerting infrastructure, and developing unified investigation tooling that significantly improved on-call efficiency and incident response quality.
Software Engineer I
Microsoft
11.2014 - 04.2016
- Led engineering design and delivery of the “Subscription Sharing with Family” feature, decomposing complex system requirements into scalable service components and delivering a production-ready MVP on schedule.
- Designed and implemented automated testing and deployment infrastructure for the My Account platform, building UI automation and response-injection frameworks that significantly improved release reliability and enabled continuous delivery across the service.
- Improved engineering throughput and delivery reliability by introducing smaller, independently deployable work units and structured development workflows, enabling parallel development and faster iteration across the team.
Software Engineer
Medius
06.2012 - 11.2014
- Led development of SOX compliance automation for enterprise customers Served as technical lead for building SOX support within MediusFlow (enterprise invoice automation platform), enabling customers to automatically generate audit-ready compliance materials and significantly reducing manual audit preparation effort.
Education
Master of Science - Computer Science
AGH University of Science and Technology
Cracow, POLAND10-2014
Skills
- Languages
C, C#, NET, NET Core
Systems & PerformanceMultithreading & Concurrency
Performance Engineering & Profiling
High-Performance Systems Design
Low-Latency & High-Throughput Services
Memory-Efficient System Design
Distributed Systems Architecture
Scalable Systems Design
High Availability Systems
Microservices Architecture
- Infrastructure & Platform Engineering
Infrastructure as Code (Bicep)
CI/CD & DevOps Automation
Containers & Cloud Platforms
Observability, Monitoring & Distributed Tracing
Service Reliability Engineering
Production Incident Management
Cloud Cost Optimization
REST APIs & GraphQL
LANGUAGES
English Full Professional Proficiency
Polish Full Professional Proficiency
Timeline
Principal Software Engineer
Microsoft
03.2023 - Current
Senior Software Engineer
Microsoft
03.2020 - 03.2023
Software Engineer II
Microsoft
05.2016 - 03.2020
Software Engineer I
Microsoft
11.2014 - 04.2016
Software Engineer
Medius
06.2012 - 11.2014
Master of Science - Computer Science
AGH University of Science and Technology