Software Development Engineer II - Back End, GenAI Platform

Expedia•Chicago, IL

46d•Hybrid

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. The Software Developer II role is part of the GenAI Platform team. The GenAI Platform team builds and operates Expedia Group’s shared generative AI platform - tooling, services, and guardrails - that enable product and ML teams to safely experiment with, deploy, and scale GenAI-powered experiences across our brands. You will design, build, and maintain core platform services and integrations that improve reliability, performance, and developer experience, helping teams deliver GenAI features to travelers and partners faster.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field; or Equivalent related professional experience.
2+ years of relevant professional experience.
Experience designing, building, and operating backend APIs and services in a cloud environment (such as AWS), including automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, and logging.
Proficiency in at least one modern programming language (such as Python, Java, or similar), with a solid foundation in software design principles, system design (LLD), data structures, design patterns, and API and data model design.
Working knowledge of at least one data store technology (relational, NoSQL, or search), such as PostgreSQL or Elasticsearch, and familiarity with AI-driven systems, tools, or workflows and applying AI/ML concepts to real world products.

Nice To Haves

Experience contributing to internal platforms, shared services, or SDKs used by multiple teams, including authoring clear technical documentation such as design documents, runbooks, and how-to guides.
Exposure to or strong interest in LLM-powered systems and GenAI concepts (for example, prompting, embeddings, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and vector stores), with demonstrated willingness to learn and safely integrate and operate AI/ML‑enabled solutions that improve platform and customer outcomes.
Familiarity with RAG or vector store tooling (such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, or LangGraph) or workflow/agent orchestration systems (for example, n8n, Flowise, or similar), and experience applying these within backend or data-intensive services.
Experience working with more than one programming language and understanding trade-offs across different backend and data workloads, including making data-driven decisions about system design, API boundaries, and data modeling for scalable services.
A track record of writing maintainable, well-structured, and well-tested code, and of proactively improving code quality, operational reliability, and observability for services running at scale on shared platform infrastructure, including AI/ML‑ or GenAI‑enabled services, with hands-on experience using AI/ML‑enabled or GenAI‑backed features in production systems

Responsibilities

Design, build, test, and operate backend services and APIs that power Expedia Group platforms and products, with a strong focus on system design (LLD), API design, and data modeling.
Implement clean, well-tested, observable code by applying modern engineering practices including code reviews, automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, alerting, logging, and participation in an on-call rotation.
Develop and integrate services in a cloud environment (such as AWS), working with data stores and messaging systems to ensure reliable, secure, and well-instrumented data flows across services and domains.
Contribute to and extend platform guardrails and safety features, including authentication, authorization, key and secret management, and service-level observability, helping applications remain secure, compliant, and operationally robust.
Work with AI/ML‑enabled tools, AI-driven systems, and workflows as part of daily engineering work, applying foundational AI/ML and GenAI concepts to real-world products and safely integrating and operating AI/ML‑enabled solutions that improve outcomes.
Own well-scoped features and components end-to-end—from design and implementation through testing, rollout, documentation, and support—collaborating with senior engineers, product managers, and applied scientists to deliver reusable capabilities across multiple product teams and domains.