Data Products & AI Architect - Enterprise Applications, FinTech

Booking Holdings, Inc.; Amsterdam; Hybrid; EUR 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid working

Up to 20 days abroad per year

Product discounts

Job summary

Booking.com, a global leader in travel tech, is seeking an experienced Data & AI Architect to design and deliver scalable architectures connecting data products, enterprise systems, and AI services. You will lead hands-on design, ensure governance, and collaborate with Product, Engineering and Finance to enable trusted Finance intelligence and scalable AI workflows.

You will partner with central technology and data teams to translate business problems into technical delivery increments,

Qualifications

• 10+ years in data engineering or data architecture, with at least 3–5 years in a lead or architect role owning platform design for large organisations.
• Delivered at least one enterprise data or AI platform into production with SLAs, on-call, and users, using tools like Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, Spark, Kafka or Airflow.
• Experience building AI applications or agents that run in production; worked with LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock, Vertex AI) and LangChain/LangGraph/MCP.
• Hands-on data architecture across semantic modeling (dbt/LookML/Cube), data contracts, data quality tools, lineage, and access controls.
• Designed systems that run at high volume (billions of events/terabytes per day).
• Experience with security, privacy, governance, and audits (GDPR, SOX, PCI DSS, ISO 27001, EU AI Act).
• Track record of working with Product, Engineering, and Finance stakeholders and ADRs/architecture reviews.

Responsibilities

• Lead technical design for Data & AI capabilities and partner with engineering teams to bring them into production.
• Connect data products, semantic models, and enterprise systems with AI services.
• Define scalable architecture across brands while respecting local data access boundaries.
• Collaborate with Product, Engineering, Finance, and Data Governance to translate priorities into delivery increments.
• Validate decisions through prototypes and production evidence; develop reusable patterns for teams.
• Embed SOX compliance, audit evidence, and governance controls throughout the AI lifecycle.

Skills

Leadership

Architecture design

Stakeholder collaboration

Security governance

Data governance

Tools

Snowflake

Databricks

BigQuery

Spark

Kafka

Airflow

Terraform

Job description

About us: At Booking.com, data drives our decisions. Technology is at our core. And innovation is everywhere. But our company is more than datasets, lines of code or A/B tests. We’re the thrill of the first night in a new place. The excitement of the next morning. The friends you make. The journeys you take. The sights you see. And the food you sample. Through our products, partners and people, we can empower everyone to experience the world.

FinTech business unit – with teams in Amsterdam, Bangalore, London and Shanghai – develops new products and drives innovation to help us continue removing financial friction from the travel process. That makes buying and selling travel-related products and services simpler for both travelers and partners.
The newly established Data & AI organisation within FinTech: Financial Systems/Enterprise Applications brings together Enterprise Data Products, AI First Finance (Finance Intelligence & Autonomous Finance), and Intelligent Automation into a single, unified organization. To support this vision, the Architecture team requires a strong technical lead for the Data and Product AI organisation to partner across trusted Finance intelligence, governed agent workflows, and scalable data foundations, establishing clear architecture responsibility while collaborating closely with Product and Engineering on delivery and trade-offs.

Role Description

AI First Finance is transforming how Finance teams across Booking Holdings access information, make decisions and execute work. We are developing trusted Finance intelligence and governed AI workflows, connecting certified financial data with reusable enterprise capabilities.

As our Data & AI Architect, you will lead technical design for these capabilities and work hands-on with engineering teams to bring them into production. You will connect data products, semantic models, enterprise systems and AI services into solutions that are reliable, traceable and practical to operate. Your designs will support shared capabilities across brands while respecting local business definitions, systems and data-access boundaries.

You will partner closely with the AI First Finance Product leaders, engineering leaders, Finance experts, enterprise data teams and Central Technology. Together, you will translate prioritized business problems into achievable delivery increments, making trade-offs between speed, quality, cost and risk explicit. You will validate critical decisions through working implementations and production evidence, and develop reusable patterns that help subsequent teams deliver faster.

Key Job Responsibilities

• Partner with Product, Engineering, Finance, Data Governance, Legal, Security, and Compliance to translate business priorities and governance policies into scalable architecture, balancing value, delivery speed, cost, and risk.

• Connect AI products to certified Finance data with clear definitions, data contracts, quality standards, lineage, and access controls.

• Design Finance intelligence with governed calculations, traceable answers, and evaluation against examples validated by Finance.

• Design and deploy AI workflows with secure integrations, robust SAP and third-party application connections, appropriate permissions, human approvals, and safe failure handling.

• Reuse, extend, and evaluate enterprise capabilities, making clear build, buy, and reuse decisions in collaboration with Central Technology.

• Validate architecture through prototypes, reference implementations, code reviews, process automation, and hands‑on support for production delivery.

• Embed evaluation, monitoring, audit evidence, SOX compliance, and segregation of duties (SoD) risk controls throughout the AI lifecycle alongside Engineering, Security, and Risk & Controls.

• Architect robust compliance structures and reusable patterns across teams and brands that scale with company growth while respecting local business definitions and data boundaries.

• Measure quality, reliability, performance, cost, and reuse to guide continuous improvements with Product and Engineering.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in data engineering or data architecture, with at least 3–5 years in a lead or architect role owning platform design for large organisations
• Delivered at least one enterprise data or AI platform into supported production (with SLAs, on-call and real internal users), using tools like Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, Spark, Kafka or Airflow. For example, you've migrated a legacy warehouse to a modern lakehouse, or launched a self‑serve data platform used by multiple teams
• Experience building AI applications or agents that run in production, not just prototypes. You've worked with LLM APIs (e.g. OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock, Vertex AI) and frameworks like LangChain, LangGraph or MCP
• Hands‑on data architecture skills across semantic modelling (e.g. dbt, LookML, Cube), data contracts, data quality (e.g. Great Expectations, Soda, Monte Carlo), lineage (e.g. OpenLineage, DataHub, Collibra, Unity Catalog) and access controls (RBAC/ABAC, row‑and‑column-level security).
• Designed systems that run at high volume, for example processing billions of events or terabytes of data per day
• Practical experience with security, privacy, governance and audit requirements for enterprise data and AI, such as GDPR, SOX, PCI DSS, ISO 27001 or the EU AI Act. You've built in controls like encryption, PII masking, audit logging and data retention, and supported internal or external audits
• A track record of working with Product, Engineering and Finance stakeholders. You can point to times you turned unclear requirements into a clear technical plan, explained trade‑offs (cost vs. speed vs. risk) to non‑technical audiences, and got teams aligned on a decision, for example through architecture decision records (ADRs) or design reviews.

Nice to have

• Experience in FinTech, payments or other regulated industries
• Experience with infrastructure as code (e.g. Terraform) on AWS, GCP or Azure
• Certifications such as AWS/GCP Professional Architect or Databricks/Snowflake architect

Benefits & Perks - Global Impact, Personal Relevance

Booking.com’s Total Rewards Philosophy is not only about compensation but also about benefits. We offer a competitive compensation and benefits package, as well unique-to-Booking.com benefits which include:

• Annual paid time off and generous paid leave scheme including: parent, grandparent, bereavement, and care leave
• Hybrid working including flexible working arrangements, and up to 20 days per year working from abroad (home country)
• Industry leading product discounts - up to 1400 per year - for yourself, including automatic Genius Level 3 status and Booking.com wallet credit
• Contributing to a high scale, complex, world renowned product and seeing real‑time impact of your work on millions of travelers worldwide;
• Working in a fast‑paced and performance driven culture;
• Opportunity to utilize technical expertise, leadership capabilities and entrepreneurial spirit
• Promote and drive impactful and innovative engineering solutions
• Technical, behavioral and interpersonal competence advancement via on‑the‑job opportunities, experimental projects, hackathons, conferences and active community participation
• Need more flexibility in your work week? We are happy to consider part‑time, and reduced working week opportunities* (min. 32 hours per week, subject to terms and conditions)

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) at Booking.com:

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion have been a core part of our company culture since day one. This ongoing journey starts with our very own employees, who represent over 140 nationalities and a wide range of ethnic and social backgrounds, genders and sexual orientations.

Take it from our Chief People Officer, Paulo Pisano: "At Booking.com, the diversity of our people doesn’t just build an outstanding workplace, it also creates a better and more inclusive travel experience for everyone. Inclusion is at the heart of everything we do. It’s a place where you can make your mark and have a real impact in travel and tech."

We ensure that colleagues with disabilities are provided the adjustments and tools they need to participate in the job application and interview process, to perform crucial job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment.

Application Process:

• Let’s go places together: How we Hire
• This role does not come with relocation assistance

Pre-Employment Screening

If your application is successful, your personal data may be used for a pre-employment screening check by a third party as permitted by applicable law. Depending on the vacancy and applicable law, a pre-employment screening may include employment history, education and other information (such as media information) that may be necessary for determining your qualifications and suitability for the position.