Distinguished Software Development Engineer, Marketing Technology

Expedia Group; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 296,000 - 415,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical/dental/vision insurance

Paid time off

Travel reimbursement

IATAN membership

Wellness program

Job summary

Expedia Group is seeking a Distinguished Engineer to shape the future of Marketing Technology. You will define technical foundations and lead platform strategy across data, decisioning, experimentation, and intelligent execution at scale.

You will mentor engineers, drive investments, and partner with leaders to deliver cohesive, adaptive marketing platforms that power travel experiences globally.

Qualifications

• 15+ years designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems with cross-organization impact.
• Proven track record defining and driving technical strategy across teams.
• Deep expertise in system architecture and data-intensive platforms at scale.
• Ability to lead ambiguous, high-stakes technical initiatives end-to-end.
• Broad depth across the stack with a holistic view of apps, platforms, data, operations, and business concerns.
• Strong proficiency in modern programming languages and cloud-native engineering practices.
• Exceptional ability to influence senior leaders and align organizations around complex decisions.

Responsibilities

• Set multi-year technical vision for next-generation marketing platforms across Expedia Group.
• Identify high-leverage technical investments that unlock growth, efficiency, quality, and capability.
• Anticipate how AI, automation, and intelligent systems will reshape marketing workflows and architect platforms accordingly.
• Design systems enabling increasingly autonomous operation across planning, creation, optimization, and execution workflows.
• Establish scalable interfaces, data contracts, and architectural patterns for safe, scalable operation.
• Lead evolution from workflow automation to cohesive, adaptive platform capabilities.
• Architect and evolve high-scale, real-time platforms spanning bidding, experimentation, decisioning, and data infrastructure.
• Ensure platforms are resilient, observable, maintainable, and cost-effective at scale.
• Drive simplification and convergence across fragmented systems into cohesive platforms.

Skills

Technical leadership

System architecture

Distributed systems

Influence senior leaders

Programming languages

Tools

Golang

Python

Kotlin

React

Kubernetes

Argo

AWS

Job description

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.

Distinguished Software Development Engineering, Marketing Technology

Introduction to the Team

At Expedia Group, we are reinventing the future of marketing technology. Our Marketing Technology platform, which is at the intersection of travel, technology, and AI powers global marketing at scale across Google, Meta, Apple, and beyond, and we are evolving for a world where AI systems increasingly participate alongside humans in planning, optimization, and execution.

Our team's mission is to design best-in-class marketing platforms that deliver measurable business impact while pushing the boundaries of what's possible. We operate like a startup inside a global company by moving fast, experimenting boldly, and building for scale. Technologies we work with include Golang, Python, Kotlin, React, Kubernetes, Argo, and AWS (EC2, ECS, EMR, RDS, S3). Our current platform already powers billions in global marketing spend across performance, brand, and creative channels. The next phase is to build more adaptive, intelligent, and autonomous systems that materially improve growth, efficiency, and capability across Expedia Group.

As a Distinguished Engineer, you will define and build the technical foundations of this transformation. This is not a role confined to a single system or team. It is a company-level technical leadership role responsible for rethinking how marketing technology works end-to-end, from data and decisioning to experimentation, creative generation, and intelligent execution.

If you thrive on solving complex problems with a hands-on approach at massive scale, shaping platform strategy, and mentoring world-class engineers, this is the place for you.

In this role, you will:

Set Technical Direction for the Future of Marketing Systems

• Define the multi-year technical vision for next-generation marketing platforms across Expedia Group.
• Identify and drive high-leverage technical investments that unlock meaningful gains in growth, efficiency, quality, and organizational capability.
• Anticipate how AI, automation, and intelligent systems will reshape marketing workflows and architect platforms accordingly.

Build intelligent, extensible platforms

• Design systems that enable increasingly autonomous operation across planning, creation, optimization, and execution workflows.
• Establish scalable interfaces, data contracts, and architectural patterns that allow intelligent systems and services to operate safely and effectively at scale.
• Lead the evolution from workflow automation and point solutions toward cohesive, adaptive platform capabilities.

Operate at system-of-systems scale

• Architect and evolve high-scale, real-time platforms spanning bidding, experimentation, decisioning, creative systems, and supporting data infrastructure.
• Ensure platforms are resilient, observable, maintainable, and cost-effective under significant scale and complexity.
• Drive simplification and convergence across fragmented systems into cohesive, extensible platforms.

Solve ambiguous, high-impact problems

• Lead initiatives where the problem, path, and solution are not fully defined.
• Break down complex, cross-domain challenges into clear technical strategy and executable plans.
• Navigate tradeoffs across performance, latency, cost, reliability, model capability, and business impact.

Shape both strategy and execution

• Partner with engineering, product, science, marketing, and business leaders to influence both what should be built and how it should be built.
• Use technical judgment, market awareness, and analytical insight to help shape investments, priorities, and long-term platform direction.
• Help shape technology-enabled traveler experiences that improve discovery, shopping, and booking across Expedia Group brands and channels.

Raise the bar across the organization

• Align senior technical and business leaders around critical architectural decisions and long-term investments.
• Define standards, patterns, and best practices that improve engineering quality, speed, reliability, and operational excellence across Expedia Group.
• Build communities of practice and bar-raising mechanisms across Marketing and Expedia Group that help teams deliver faster and with higher quality.

Grow technical leaders and organizational capability

• Mentor and sponsor senior engineers and technical leaders.
• Strengthen the organization through technical leadership, coaching, and example.
• Act as a force multiplier by creating reusable approaches, improving engineering judgment, and enabling teams to deliver more effectively at scale.

Minimum qualifications:

• 15+ years of experience designing, building, and operating large-scale, distributed systems, with significant impact across multiple organizations, platforms, or domains.
• Proven track record of defining and driving technical strategy across teams and influencing adoption across independent organizations.
• Deep expertise in system architecture, distributed systems, and data-intensive platforms at scale.
• Demonstrated ability to lead ambiguous, high-stakes technical initiatives from concept through production.
• Broad technical depth across multiple layers of the stack, with the ability to reason holistically across application, platform, data, operational, and business concerns.
• Strong proficiency in modern programming languages, cloud-native architectures, and production-grade engineering practices.
• Exceptional ability to influence senior leaders and align organizations around complex technical decisions.

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience building AI/ML-driven or agent-enabled systems in production, including decisioning, optimization, generative systems, or intelligent workflow orchestration
• Deep domain expertise in marketing technology, advertising systems, search, experimentation, or optimization platforms.
• Track record of creating new platforms, primitives, or architectural patterns adopted across an organization.
• Experience designing systems that balance model capability, latency, cost, reliability, and operational complexity at scale.
• Proven ability to shape product or business direction through technical insight and systems thinking.
• Experience building communities, technical programs, or bar-raising initiatives that improved organizational effectiveness across multiple teams.

The total cash range for this position in Seattle is $296,000.00 to $414,500.00. Employees in this role have the potential to increase their pay up to $473,500.00, which is the top of the range, based on ongoing, demonstrated, and sustained performance in the role.

Starting pay for this role will vary based on multiple factors, including location, available budget, and an individual's knowledge, skills, and experience. Pay ranges may be modified in the future.

Expedia Group is proud to offer a wide range of benefits to support employees and their families, including medical/dental/vision, paid time off, and an Employee Assistance Program. To fuel each employee's passion for travel, we offer a wellness & travel reimbursement, travel discounts, and an International Airlines Travel Agent (IATAN) membership.

Accommodation requests

If you need assistance with any part of the application or recruiting process due to a disability, or other physical or mental health conditions.

We are proud to be named as a Best Place to Work on Glassdoor in 2024 and be recognized for award-winning culture by organizations like Forbes, TIME, Disability:IN, and others.

Expedia Groups family of brands includes: Brand Expedia®, Hotels.com®, Expedia® Partner Solutions, Vrbo®, trivago®, Orbitz®, Travelocity®, Hotwire®, Wotif®, ebookers®, CheapTickets®, Expedia Group™ Media Solutions, Expedia Local Expert®, CarRentals.com™, and Expedia Cruises™.

Employment opportunities and job offers at Expedia Group will always come from Expedia Group's Talent Acquisition and hiring teams. Never provide sensitive, personal information to someone unless you’re confident who the recipient is. Expedia Group does not extend job offers via email or any other messaging tools to individuals with whom we have not made prior contact. Our email domain is @expediagroup.com. The official website to find and apply for job openings at Expedia Group is careers.expediagroup.com/jobs.

Expedia is committed to creating an inclusive work environment with a diverse workforce. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. This employer participates in E-Verify. The employer will provide the Social Security Administration (SSA) and, if necessary, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with information from each new employee’s I-9 to confirm work authorization.