Principal Software Development Engineer, ML-Powered Flight Search

Expedia•Seattle, WA

19d

About The Position

At Expedia Group, we help travelers explore the world, one journey at a time. As a global travel company powered by passionate people, trusted partnerships, and leading technology, we connect travelers, partners, and advertisers through our consumer brands, B2B network, and travel advertising business. Here, you'll do meaningful work that helps millions of people discover, book, and experience travel with more ease, confidence, and joy. Our five Behaviors-Traveler First, Think Big, Operate with Excellence, Ownership Mindset, and Succeed Together-help foster a supportive environment where people can grow their careers and have the flexibility, benefits, and support to do their best work. Join us and build for travelers everywhere. The Air Shopping Platform organization owns the end‑to‑end platform that powers Flight Search, Pricing, and Shopping across all Expedia Group points of sale, partnering closely with product, analytics, and connectivity teams. We are responsible for building a reliable, highly performant, scalable, and cost‑effective platform that delivers fast and relevant flight offers to the shopping experiences via Flight Search, Flight Details, and additional supporting APIs. The team is primarily accountable for driving flight transaction growth at Expedia Group across many, concurrent workstreams.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field; or equivalent related professional experience.
12+ years of relevant professional experience.
Demonstrated expertise in large-scale system architecture, technical decision making, and delivery of complex multi-domain solutions.
Proven track record in designing and operating secure, high-quality, and scalable software systems.
Familiarity with AI-driven systems, tools, or workflows and applying AI/ML concepts to real world products.

Nice To Haves

Experience leading architectural transformation and modernization initiatives for large, distributed systems.
Demonstrated success guiding engineering organizations through periods of significant growth, change, or complexity.
Expertise in full stack engineering with proven ability to operate across multiple technical domains and platforms.
Track record of championing data-driven decision making and operational excellence for mission-critical systems.
Experience building and deploying neural search and embedding-based retrieval systems, including vector databases (e.g., Pinecone, Weaviate, FAISS), semantic search architectures, and large-scale similarity search at scale with sub-100ms latency requirements.
Strong experience with deep learning frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow) for production ML systems, including designing and deploying ranking models, personalization engines, and real-time inference pipelines with knowledge of model serving patterns (e.g., TorchServe, TensorFlow Serving, BentoML) and online/offline evaluation frameworks.

Responsibilities

Lead the architectural vision, design, and delivery of complex software solutions across multiple technical domains.
Drive system design, API development, and data modeling to ensure secure, maintainable, and high-performing platforms.
Guide and mentor engineering teams, fostering technical excellence and innovation across projects and domains.
Safely integrate and operate AI/ML-enabled solutions that improve outcomes, championing best practices in responsible AI deployment.
Optimize operational excellence by implementing robust software development practices and scalable engineering processes.
Collaborate with cross-functional partners to deliver resilient, business-aligned technology solutions and support continuous improvement.