Geographer III

Expedia • Seattle, WA

13d

About The Position

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. Geographer III: Join Expedia Group’s World-Class Destination Data Team! Expedia Group’s Destination Team is a group of GIS and geographic data experts dedicated to building, maintaining, and evolving the global spatial data foundation that powers our destination experiences worldwide. As a Geographer III, you will be a senior individual contributor based in Seattle or Austin, leading high-impact, cross-functional initiatives to scale and operationalize our global geography products. You’ll partner with product, engineering, machine learning, policy, and business leadership to define strategy, deliver production-ready solutions, and mentor others across the organization.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree with 7+ years’ relevant geospatial experience, or Master’s degree with 3+ years’ relevant experience, or equivalent combination of experience and education.
• Deep, demonstrable expertise in geographic data analysis, taxonomy design, and building/managing complex spatial hierarchies at a global scale.
• Proven experience applying AI/ML and LLMs to geospatial problems — from prototyping to production deployments — with measurable impact on efficiency, quality, or scale.
• Advanced proficiency with GIS platforms and spatial databases (e.g., ArcGIS Enterprise, PostGIS, BigQuery GIS, SpatiaLite), including spatial schema design, performance tuning, and indexing strategies.
• Strong software engineering and data engineering skills — fluent in Python and/or R, experience with SQL and spatial query optimization, and competency with workflow orchestration (Airflow, Prefect), containerization (Docker), and CI/CD practices.
• Experience with cloud-native geospatial infrastructure (AWS/GCP/Azure), distributed processing (Spark, Dask), and data engineering best practices for large-scale geospatial datasets.
• Solid understanding of cartography and advanced visualization techniques, including interactive visual analytics for non-technical stakeholders.
• Excellent problem-solving and critical thinking — able to decompose ambiguous business problems into technical approaches and measurable outcomes.
• Strong communication and influencing skills — proven ability to present complex technical concepts to executive audiences and to align cross-functional teams.
• Track record of mentoring, coaching, and elevating the capabilities of other geographers or technical colleagues.
• Demonstrated experience navigating geopolitical complexity and making defensible decisions that balance product, legal, and stakeholder considerations.

Responsibilities

• Lead strategic, AI-driven geospatial initiatives end-to-end — conceive, design, and deliver major frameworks, global hierarchy redesigns, and highly scalable data products that support Expedia Group’s travel ecosystem.
• Own the curation, governance, and continuous optimization of Expedia Group’s global geography library and taxonomy — define standards, quality KPIs, and release processes for production datasets and hierarchies.
• Architect and productionize AI/LLM enabled geospatial workflows — integrate LLMs and ML models into extraction, classification, reconciliation, and enrichment pipelines to accelerate curation and improve accuracy for travel-specific use cases.
• Design advanced spatial models, analytical systems, and interactive visualizations that reveal multi-scale patterns, relationships, and business-relevant insights; translate these into actionable product and operational recommendations.
• Build and optimize automated, reproducible geospatial pipelines using modern tooling (scripting, spatial databases, workflow orchestration, containerization, and cloud services) to ensure scalable, reliable delivery.
• Resolve complex geopolitical, legal, and stakeholder conflicts — balance traveler needs, commercial priorities, and sensitive geopolitical constraints while maintaining defensible, auditable geographic decisions.
• Serve as a trusted advisor and subject matter expert to senior product and business stakeholders — influence product roadmaps, SLAs, and cross-functional strategy with data-driven arguments.
• Mentor and upskill geographers and cross-functional partners — evangelize best practices, develop templates and training, and contribute to communities of practice across the company.
• Evaluate and integrate third-party data and vendor solutions where appropriate; recommend tooling, architecture, and sourcing strategies to support long-term scalability and cost-efficiency.

Benefits

• 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
• medical/dental/vision
• paid time off
• Employee Assistance Program
• wellness & travel reimbursement
• travel discounts
• International Airlines Travel Agent ( IATAN ) membership

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level