Principal Software Development Engineer

Traveltechessentialist; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 224,100 - 273,900; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Travel perks

Generous time‑off

Parental leave

Flexible work model

Career development resources

Job summary

Expedia Group in San Jose is seeking a Principal Software Development Engineer to drive architectural evolution and Cloud Platform modernization. The role centers on cell-based architecture, Kubernetes strategy, and improving reliability with SRE standards and scalable observability.

You will lead FinOps initiatives and developer workflow improvements while guiding teams toward robust, cost-aware systems. A hands-on leader comfortable prototyping is expected.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience designing, building, and operating large-scale cloud-native distributed systems on Kubernetes.
• Proven ownership of critical services and multi-service platforms (design, data modeling, deployment, health).
• Deep expertise with at least one major public cloud (AWS or GCP) and core platform technologies.
• Ability to make high-impact architectural decisions and guide teams toward long-term direction.
• Familiarity with AI-driven systems and applying AI/ML concepts to cloud environments.
• Hands-on approach with production-grade implementations.

Responsibilities

• Lead architectural evolution toward a cell-based, horizontally scalable architecture.
• Define Kubernetes strategy for multi-cluster management, service mesh and automation.
• Set SRE standards, automation for incident response, and SLO/SLI management.
• Lead FinOps strategy, building tooling to tie infrastructure spend to business value.
• Support developer workflows with standardized Dev Containers and transient environments.

Skills

Kubernetes expertise

Cloud platforms

Go or Rust

Observability

IaC (Terraform Pulumi)

CI/CD

AI/ML concepts

Tools

Terraform

Pulumi

Kubernetes

OpenTelemetry

Prometheus

CI/CD tooling

Job description

Principal Software Development Engineer

Our Technology Team partners with teams across Expedia Group to create innovative products, services, and tools that deliver high‑quality experiences for travelers, partners, and employees. The Cloud Platform organization provides secure, scalable cloud infrastructure and developer experience tooling that enables teams to build, deploy, and operate resilient software quickly and safely.

In this role, you will:

• Lead Architectural Evolution: Own the move toward a Cell‑Based Architecture to replace fragile monolithic clusters with isolated, predictable failure domains that scale horizontally with confidence.
• Modernize Kubernetes & Infrastructure: Define and implement the Kubernetes strategy, focusing on multi‑cluster management, service mesh, and automated scaling. Ensure our “Golden Path” makes it easy for engineers to do the right thing by default.
• Hardened Reliability & Observability: Set SRE standards for the organization, moving beyond basic dashboards to causal observability, automated incident response, and rigorous SLO/SLI management.
• Optimize Cloud Economics: Lead the FinOps technical strategy, building tooling and visibility that ties infrastructure spend directly to business value.
• Support the Developer Workflow: Build agent‑friendly infrastructure, including standardized Dev Containers and transient environments that enable fast, isolated iteration without impacting shared state.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Extensive experience designing, building, and operating large‑scale, cloud‑native distributed systems and platform services on Kubernetes.
• Proven ownership of critical services or multi‑service platforms, including system design, API design, data modeling, deployment, and operational health.
• Deep expertise with at least one major public cloud provider and core platform technologies (compute, networking, storage, service discovery, security, observability, and CI/CD).
• Ability to make high‑impact architectural decisions, navigate complex trade‑offs, and guide multiple teams toward coherent, long‑term technical direction.
• Familiarity with AI‑driven systems and applying AI/ML concepts to cloud or platform environments.
• Deep knowledge of observability patterns (OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, distributed tracing).
• Expert‑level understanding of Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Pulumi) and CI/CD at scale.
• Proficiency in Go, Rust, or similar modern platform engineering languages.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Track record of defining and evolving multi‑year technical strategies for cloud and developer platform ecosystems, and successfully driving adoption of shared platforms across many teams.
• Experience designing and operating highly available, globally distributed systems at internet scale, including capacity planning, performance optimization, and robust failure handling.
• Safely integrates and operates AI/ML‑enabled solutions that improve outcomes, such as intelligent routing, predictive scaling, or automated remediation with appropriate safeguards.
• Advanced experience applying AI/ML techniques to cloud and platform problems and partnering with data/ML teams to productionize these capabilities.
• A Systems Architect: Deep plumbing knowledge of the cloud (AWS/GCP, Kubernetes, networking). Thinks in terms of failure domains, latencies, and unit economics.
• Reliability‑First: Carries a pager for global‑scale systems and has a healthy “paranoia” about state, consistency, and cascading failures.
• Hands‑on: Loves to build prototypes and ensures production‑grade quality before shipping.

Pay range (San Jose): $249,000.00 – $348,500.00. Total cash potential up to $398,500.00 based on sustained performance.

We offer a full benefits package including travel perks, generous time‑off, parental leave, flexible work model, and career development resources.

Expedia Group is committed to creating an inclusive work environment. 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.