Principal Software Development Engineer

Expedia Group brands power global travel for everyone everywhere. We design cutting-edge tech to make travel smoother and more memorable and we create groundbreaking solutions for our partners. Our diverse vibrant and welcoming community is essential in driving our success.

Why Join Us?

To shape the future of travel people must come first. Guided by our Values and Leadership Agreements we foster an open culture where everyone belongs differences are celebrated and know that when one of us wins we all win.

We provide a full benefits package including exciting travel perks generous time-off parental leave a flexible work model (with some pretty cool offices) and career development resources all to fuel our employees' passion for travel and ensure a rewarding career journey. We’re building a more open world. Join us.

Principal Software Development Engineer

This role sits within Expedia’s Traveler & Partner Service Platform (TPSP) Product & Technology organization which builds the core capabilities and experiences that power customer service across the Expedia ecosystem. TPSP enables both travelers and partners to receive high-quality efficient service through a combination of human support and AI-powered experiences.
We are looking for a highly influential engineering leader to help drive the technical strategy and execution for LLM-powered AI Agent servicing for Expedia travelers and partners with experience building durable systems at scale and advanced Agentic AI engineering skillsets. This role will define and lead the transformation towards scalable voice and chat based self-service experiences powered by AI agents—reducing customer effort while improving resolution speed consistency customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
As a Principal Software Development Engineer you will partner with key engineering product and science leaders to influence product direction and execute on the long-term technical vision for customer AI servicing drive complex cross-functional execution and build a culture of engineering excellence and innovation in the organization. You will operate as an indispensable leader shaping how agentic AI is designed governed measured and scaled across TPSP.
In this role you will:

• Lead the architecture design and delivery of complex distributed systems that power high-scale mission-critical services.

• Define and evolve technical strategy and roadmaps for your domain making high-impact design decisions and setting engineering best practices.

• Write and review high-quality production-grade code (design implementation tests) and drive continuous improvements in reliability performance security and cost efficiency.

• Partner closely with product program and other engineering teams to translate business problems into end-to-end technical solutions.

• Drive operational excellence including observability incident response postmortems capacity planning and readiness for peak events.

• Act as a technical mentor and multiplier coaching senior engineers influencing technical direction across teams and raising the overall engineering bar.

• Evaluate and introduce modern technologies tools and patterns (e.g. cloud-native architectures CI/CD data/ML integrations) where they add clear value.

• Champion engineering quality security and compliance standards ensuring solutions are robust scalable and sustainable.

Experience and Qualifications: 

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science Engineering or a related technical field or equivalent practical experience.

• 10+ years of professional experience in software development building backend or full-stack systems in production.

• Strong expertise in at least one modern programming language (e.g. Java Kotlin C# Go Python or similar).

• Proven experience designing and operating distributed cloud-based systems (microservices APIs event-driven architectures data stores).

• Demonstrated ownership of end-to-end solutions from design through implementation launch and ongoing operations.

• Strong skills in system design data modeling and API design with the ability to make and explain trade-offs.

• Experience with CI/CD automated testing and modern DevOps practices.

• Excellent communication and collaboration skills with a track record of influencing across teams and organizations.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience as a principal-level engineer or equivalent setting technical direction for multiple teams or services.

• Depth in one or more of: high availability and resiliency large-scale data processing performance optimization security and compliance or platform/infrastructure engineering.

• Hands-on experience with public cloud platforms (e.g. AWS GCP Azure) and cloud-native technologies (containers orchestration service mesh).

• Experience working in highly regulated or safety-/mission-critical environments with strong attention to reliability and risk management.

• Proven track record of mentoring and developing senior engineers and contributing to hiring and talent development.

• Familiarity with integrating data or ML-powered features into production services (e.g. recommendations ranking personalization risk/fraud signals).

Starting pay for this role will vary based on multiple factors including location available budget and an individual’s knowledge skills and experience. Pay ranges may be modified in the future.

Expedia Group is proud to offer a wide range of benefits to support employees and their families including medical/dental/vision paid time off and an Employee Assistance Program. To fuel each employee’s passion for travel we offer a wellness & travel reimbursement travel discounts and an International Airlines Travel Agent (IATAN) membership. View our full list of benefits.

Accommodation requests

If you need assistance with any part of the application or recruiting process due to a disability or other physical or mental health conditions please reach out to our Recruiting Accommodations Team through the Accommodation Request.

We are proud to be named as a Best Place to Work on Glassdoor in 2024 and be recognized for award-winning culture by organizations like Forbes TIME Disability:IN and others.

Expedia Group's family of brands includes: Brand Expedia® Hotels.com® Expedia® Partner Solutions Vrbo® trivago® Orbitz® Travelocity® Hotwire® Wotif® ebookers® CheapTickets® Expedia Group™ Media Solutions Expedia Local Expert® CarRentals.com™ and Expedia Cruises™. © 2024 Expedia Inc. All rights reserved. Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners. CST: 2029030-50

Employment opportunities and job offers at Expedia Group will always come from Expedia Group’s Talent Acquisition and hiring teams. Never provide sensitive personal information to someone unless you’re confident who the recipient is. Expedia Group does not extend job offers via email or any other messaging tools to individuals with whom we have not made prior contact. Our email domain is @expediagroup.com. The official website to find and apply for job openings at Expedia Group is careers.expediagroup.com/jobs.

What We Do

Expedia Group powers travel for everyone everywhere through our global platform. Driven by the core belief that travel is a force for good we help people experience the world in new ways and build lasting connections. We provide industry-leading technology solutions to fuel partner growth and success while facilitating memorable experiences for travelers. Expedia Group's family of brands includes: Brand Expedia® Hotels.com® Expedia® Partner Solutions Vrbo® trivago® Orbitz® Travelocity® Hotwire® Wotif® ebookers® CheapTickets® Expedia Group™ Media Solutions Expedia Local Expert® CarRentals.com™ and Expedia Cruises™.

Why Work With Us

As travelers and technologists we are passionate about making travel more seamless accessible and memorable. We embrace different perspectives celebrate new ideas and empower every Expedian to drive meaningful change. The experiences we create bridge divides and broaden horizons – helping create unforgettable memories through travel.

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