Forward Deployed AI Engineer III

11105 Expedia, Inc.; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 117,000 - 163,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision coverage

Paid time off

Wellness programs

Travel discounts

IATAN membership

Job summary

Expedia Group is hiring an Forward Deployed AI Engineer III to lead design, engineering, and continuous improvement of cloud infrastructure and enterprise AI systems. You will own service and integration architectures, drive IaC and automation, and mentor engineers across teams.

The role emphasizes security, observability, and scalable data/workflow flows, with a focus on cost efficiency and governance in production AI workflows at scale.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of infrastructure/platform/enterprise systems engineering or 3+ years with a Master’s degree.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience; technical degree preferred.
• Hands-on experience with public cloud IaaS (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and IaC tooling.

Responsibilities

• Own service and integration architecture for AI platforms and enterprise systems with security and cost focus.
• Design reusable IaC modules and automation frameworks; enforce policy-as-code.
• Lead incident resolution, RCA, and post-incident analysis across teams; automate improvements.
• Design integration architectures for SaaS platforms and enterprise systems with security and compliance.
• Define SLOs and engineer observability with telemetry, tests, and alerts.

Skills

Cloud IaaS

IaC automation

Python or Go

AI/ML literacy

Security & compliance

Observability & SRE

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

Terraform

Pulumi

Job description

Forward Deployed AI Engineer III

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 AI & Automation Team onboards and manages AI tools, and partners with teams across Expedia Group to create innovative products and services. We deliver high-quality experiences for employees worldwide with best-in-class technology to boost productivity and enable AI in the flow of work. We’re hiring a Forward Deployed AI Engineer III to own the design, engineering, and continuous improvement of our cloud infrastructure and enterprise AI systems, as part of our growing team. You’ll work at the intersection of platform engineering and AI, owning service and integration architectures, driving IaC and automation strategy, and enabling other engineers through high-quality patterns, decision records, and mentorship.

In this role, you will:

• Own service and integration architecture for AI platforms and enterprise systems — designing for security, cost-efficiency, and long-term operability from the start.
• Design and implement reusable IaC modules and automation frameworks; enforce policy-as-code and reduce operational toil at scale.
• Lead incident resolution, RCA, and post-incident analysis across teams; prevent recurrence through automation and architectural improvements.
• Design integration architectures connecting internal platforms and enterprise SaaS systems; ensure security, compliance, and scalability of data and workflow flows.
• Define SLOs and engineer actionable observability — telemetry pipelines, synthetic tests, and alerting — to give teams the signals they need to operate confidently.
• Champion automation and SaaS integration best practices; measure toil reduction and drive adoption across the team.
• Design cross-team operational flows; optimize handoffs, runbooks, and escalation paths to reduce failure demand.
• Author architecture decision records, technical design documents, and self-service content that enable teams to move faster without creating dependencies on you.
• Forecast capacity and cost impacts; surface data-driven recommendations to inform infrastructure investment decisions.
• Mentor junior and mid-level engineers; define documentation templates and engineering standards that scale your expertise across the team.

Minimum qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in infrastructure, platform, or enterprise systems engineering (or 3+ years with a Master’s degree).
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience in a relevant field; technical degree preferred.
• Demonstrated growth mindset and the ability to own initiatives end-to-end — from problem framing through delivery — while coordinating a broad range of stakeholders across platform, security, and business teams.
• Hands-on, design-level experience with public cloud IaaS (AWS, Azure, or GCP) — compute, networking, storage, IAM — paired with ownership of IaC automation (Terraform, Pulumi, or equivalent), including building reusable modules and policy-as-code frameworks.
• Proficiency in at least one programming language (Python, Go, or similar), with a track record of building automation that reduces operational toil, forecasting capacity, and making cost-aware recommendations.
• Experience designing integration architectures for SaaS platforms or enterprise systems, including lifecycle management, security controls, and compliance considerations.
• Experience defining SLOs and engineering observability solutions (telemetry, synthetic testing, alerting) that drive measurable operational improvements.
• Solid AI/ML literacy, including working knowledge of LLMs, RAG, agentic systems, and AI-assisted operations — with the ability to architect guardrails, governance controls, and monitoring for AI workflows in production.
• Experience administering or integrating enterprise AI copilot and knowledge-assistant platforms — including access controls, data integration, and driving adoption across business teams.
• Demonstrated ownership of service or integration architecture, including security and operability design decisions from inception through production.
• Strong technical communication skills, including the ability to author architecture decision records, design documents, and runbooks that serve as durable references.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with enterprise SaaS administration and integration at scale (e.g. Glean, ServiceNow, Salesforce, or similar platforms).
• Experience leading or contributing to platform team engineering standards, templates, or golden paths used by multiple teams.
• Demonstrated mentorship of less experienced engineers, including code or design review and structured technical guidance.
• Contributions to open-source infrastructure tooling or internal developer platforms.
• Experience working in an environment where AI/automation is embedded into operational workflows — not just a future roadmap item.
• Familiarity with FinOps practices — unit economics, cost attribution, and cloud cost optimization at the workload level.

The total cash range for this position in Austin is $116,500.00 to $163,000.00. Employees in this role have the potential to increase their pay up to $186,500.00, 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.

Benefits and perks

Expedia Group offers benefits and perks designed to support employees and their families, including medical, dental, and vision coverage, paid time off, an Employee Assistance Program, wellness and travel reimbursement, travel discounts, and International Airlines Travel Agent Network (IATAN) membership.

Accommodation requests

Expedia Group is committed to providing an inclusive and accessible recruiting experience. If you need an accommodation or adjustment due to a disability during the application or recruiting process, please submit a request at https://expedia.service-now.com/askeg?id=job_accommodation.

About Expedia Group

Expedia Group includes three flagship consumer brands — Expedia, Hotels.com, and Vrbo — along with a leading B2B travel business and travel advertising offerings. Across our brands and business, we help travelers explore the world with confidence and ease.

Equal Opportunity

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, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. 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.