Principal AI Engineer- Customer Data Platform

Expedia Group•Seattle, WA

About The Position

Expedia Group is using AI to re-invent how we do engineering to deliver hyper-personalized traveler experiences. At the foundation of every successful AI initiative is data. The Customer Data Platform team is at the heart of Expedia Group's AI transformation, powering personalized experiences for over 700 million travelers annually across Expedia, Hotels.com, Vrbo, and our entire brand portfolio. We're a dynamic group of engineers, data scientists, and product experts who are pioneering the use of generative AI and agentic systems to revolutionize how traveler data is processed, understood, and activated at a massive scale. We're not just building data pipelines – we're creating autonomous AI systems that understand traveler intent, predict needs, and enable hyper-personalized travel experiences in real-time. Our team culture celebrates innovation, where experimentation is encouraged, failures are learning opportunities, and breakthrough ideas come from everyone. You'll work alongside industry leaders who've built transformative systems at companies like Meta, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, tackling fascinating challenges like multi-modal travel planning, real-time personalization across 70+ countries and 30+ languages, and building AI that truly understands the nuances of human travel desires. The Customer Data Platform team at Expedia Group is looking for a proven, entrepreneurial, hands-on technical leader who will define and implement the vision for AI automated data engineering that will power EG’s hyper personalized traveler experiences. This is a rare opportunity to shape the future of AI in travel technology while having an immediate impact on how millions of people experience the joy of travel.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field; or Equivalent related professional experience
12+ years of relevant professional experience
Extensive professional experience designing, building, and operating largescale, distributed backend or full stack services, including ownership of critical systems or platforms
Demonstrated expertise in system design (including detailed component and low level design), API design, and data modeling for high throughput, low latency services
Proven ability to own and drive technical direction and execution across multiple services or domains, influencing architecture and standards across teams, with strong software engineering skills in one or more modern programming languages

Nice To Haves

Advanced degree in a relevant technical field (e.g., Computer Science, Machine Learning, Applied Mathematics) with a focus on AI, ML, or large scale distributed systems
Track record of defining and evolving technical architectures for AI powered platforms or products operating at global scale, including data pipelines, feature stores, and online inference systems
Expertise in building and integrating ML models into production services, including experimentation frameworks, evaluation, monitoring, and safe rollout strategies for AI driven features
Experience leading cross functional technical initiatives and establishing best practices for reliability, performance, security, and cost optimization in AI intensive systems
Familiarity with AI driven systems, tools, or workflows and applying AI/ML concepts to real world products, including safely integrating and operating AI/ML enabled solutions that improve outcomes, and providing technical leadership on responsible and efficient AI use appropriate to a principal level AI engineer

Responsibilities

Drive the technical vision, architecture, and implementation of AI driven systems and services that power critical Expedia Group products across multiple domains
Design and review complex system architectures, including detailed low-level designs, API contracts, and data models that enable robust, scalable, and secure AI capabilities
Lead end to end delivery of AI features and platforms, from problem framing and data/feature strategy through model integration, evaluation, and safe deployment into production
Build agentic systems that produce traveler data products that form the foundation of personalization across the entire customer journey, from user acquisition to post-trip engagement
Mentor and technically guide engineers across teams, elevating AI engineering practices, code quality, observability, and reliability for services operating at global scale
Collaborate with product, data science, and platform teams to translate ambiguous business and customer problems into well defined technical solutions leveraging ML, optimization, and intelligent automation
Safely integrate and operate AI/ML enabled solutions that improve outcomes, including familiarity with AI driven systems, tools, or workflows and applying AI/ML concepts to real world products