Principal AI & Loyalty Systems Architect

Expedia; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 249,000 - 349,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision coverage

Paid time off

Employee Assistance Program

Wellness and travel reimbursement

Travel discounts

IATAN membership

Job summary

Expedia Group in San Jose is seeking a Principal Engineer to set the technical vision for the AI-powered Loyalty charter, designing and delivering scalable, secure experiences across distributed services. You will mentor engineers, drive architecture decisions, collaborate with product, data science, and platform teams, and relentlessly improve systems that engage travelers and loyalty partners at scale.

This role requires hands-on leadership, deep architectural judgment, and the ability to

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent professional experience.
• 12+ years of relevant professional experience.
• Demonstrated expertise in large scale system architecture, technical decision making, and delivery of complex solutions spanning multiple domains.
• Strong technical depth across distributed services, cloud infrastructure, and applied AI, with particular strength in frontend architecture.
• Hands on experience designing, building, and shipping AI powered products in production environments.
• Proven ability to build experiences for personalization, experimentation, loyalty, or growth platforms at scale.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain complex AI and architectural concepts clearly to engineers, product partners, and senior leaders alike.
• Ability to build alignment across teams without relying on formal authority.

Responsibilities

• Set the architectural vision, design, and delivery approach for complex software solutions across multiple technical domains, enabling AI and machine learning powered loyalty offers and experiences.
• Drive system design, API development, and data modeling so our platforms remain secure, maintainable, and able to perform at scale.
• Take on the most technically demanding problems across the loyalty experience ecosystem, stepping in where existing solutions fall short and closing critical gaps.
• Mentor and raise the bar for engineering teams, fostering technical excellence and encouraging genuine innovation across projects and domains.
• Elevate and simplify, always keeping the underlying business problem and customer metrics in view rather than treating architecture as an end in itself.
• Strengthen operational excellence by championing rigorous software development practices and engineering processes that scale with the organization.
• Build a deep, functional understanding of the loyalty and travel foundations ecosystem, including its capabilities, dependencies, and architectural boundaries.

Skills

System architecture

Distributed services

Cloud infrastructure

Applied AI

Frontend architecture

Communication

Cross-team alignment

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Job description

Expedia Group in San Jose is seeking a Principal Engineer to set the technical vision for the AI-powered Loyalty charter, designing and delivering scalable, secure experiences across distributed services. You will mentor engineers, drive architecture decisions, collaborate with product, data science, and platform teams, and relentlessly improve systems that engage travelers and loyalty partners at scale.

This role requires hands-on leadership, deep architectural judgment, and the ability to