Principal Software Development Engineer - Business to Agent

Expedia Group; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 231,000 - 324,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision coverage

Travel discounts

Job summary

Expedia Group is seeking a senior software engineer to shape an AI-native marketing platform that interfaces with agents and explores scalable architectures for data, services, and orchestration. You will partner with product, marketing, data science, and architecture leaders to drive high-impact engineering outcomes.

The role requires deep backend skills, experience with cloud systems (AWS), Kubernetes, and observable, cost-efficient services.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of hands-on software engineering experience (or 6+ with a Master’s).
• Hands-on experience with agentic / AI systems (LLMs, RAG, tools/MCPs, agent orchestration).
• Demonstrated expertise in systems architecture, API design, and integrating third‑party products and platforms.

Responsibilities

• Set technical vision for agentic marketing and own the outcomes.
• Lead technical vision and target architecture for the agentic marketing platform - spanning data, services, workflows, experimentation, third-party APIs, and agent-facing surfaces.
• Translate the agentic search strategy and investment roadmap into a sequenced, opinionated engineering plan with clear trade-offs and success criteria.
• Partner with product, marketing, data science, SEO/AEO, and architecture leaders to align on priorities, interfaces, and ownership boundaries.
• Work cross functionally with many internal and external teams to deliver outcomes with proven ability to influence without direct authority.

Skills

Hands-on software engineering

AI systems

API design

Cross-functional collaboration

Cloud platforms

Kubernetes

Tools

AWS

Kubernetes

Job description

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.

We create and deliver tailored marketing strategies for Expedia Group’s brands, focusing on establishing strong connections and cohesive experiences for travelers and partners. We leverage our functional expertise and creative excellence to build trust and loyalty for our brands through innovative marketing approaches and technology.

At Expedia Group, we’re entering a new era where AI agents become a primary interface between travellers and brands, reshaping how intent, search, evaluation, and booking happen end‑to‑end. We were early in this space with our early investments, and we’re extending that foundation into a dedicated marketing capability focused on influencing agents across the full travel funnel.

This role will be part of an AI‑native team that sits at the intersection of marketing, AI, and large‑scale platforms. We build the systems that make Expedia Group’s supply, pricing, and brand legible, accessible, and preferred by horizontal agents, agent browsers, co‑workers, and emerging agent surfaces.

If you’re excited to define how Expedia Group shows up to AI agents and build the systems that make us the number one AI agent marketer in travel, this role is for you.

In This Role, You Will

• Set technical vision for agentic marketing and own the outcomes
• Lead technical vision and own the target architecture for the agentic marketing platform - spanning data, services, workflows, experimentation, third-party APIs, and agent-facing surfaces - partnering closely with the agentic search lead, who owns channel strategy and outcomes.
• Translate the agentic search strategy and investment roadmap into a sequenced, opinionated engineering plan with clear trade‑offs and success criteria.
• Partner with product, marketing, data science, SEO/AEO, and architecture leaders to align on priorities, interfaces, and ownership boundaries.
• Work cross functionally with many internal and external teams to deliver outcomes with proven ability to influence without direct authority.

Build agent legibility & access

• Design and ship systems that make EG content, reliably machine‑readable and preferred for different agent archetypes (horizontal agents, agentic commerce, browsers, co‑workers).
• Extend marketing surfaces beyond traditional web indices into agent‑specific indices, model training data, live retrieval, and memory infrastructure.
• Create and evolve products designed for specific agent archetypes and crawlers - including agent-specific surfaces, indices, and CLIs.
• Build 0-to-1: stand up the first measurement, agent-observability, data/content, and agent-specific products (CLIs, indices, agents).
• Architect engineering workflows around fleets of autonomous coding agents and sub‑agents, treating orchestration of agent labor - not just personal output - as the core leverage model.
• Ensure high‑quality Agent Access via APIs, MCPs, feeds, and other integration points, including authorization, observability, and SLOs.
• Lead the design of observability and experimentation to understand how agents reason (e.g., chain‑of‑thought logging, ranking signals, bias analysis).

Anchor a small and focused engineering squad

• Serve as the technical anchor for a small, ring‑fenced squad (STL + engineers), setting engineering standards, reviewing designs, and making crisp architectural calls while working closely with the broader engineering team.
• Coach and mentor engineers across Marketing Tech and adjacent orgs, raising the bar on system design, AI integration, experimentation, and operational excellence.
• Foster an AI‑native, zero‑coordination tax culture that uses automation and agents to amplify output and move quickly, with failure as a design principle.
• Ensure systems are observable, resilient, secure, and cost‑efficient, with clear SLOs and runbooks.
• Operate with a highly discretionary build budget - pre‑approved token consumption, AI vendor adoption, and unconventional experimentation (e.g., dedicated hardware for synthetic agent-log generation) - and spend it to maximize speed.

Minimum Qualifications

• 10+ years of hands‑on software engineering experience (or 6+ with a Master’s)
• Hands‑on experience with agentic / AI systems (LLMs, RAG, tools/MCPs, agent orchestration)
• Demonstrated expertise in systems architecture, API design, and integrating third‑party products and platforms
• Product sense, ability to reason about what to build and for whom, prioritize on desirability / feasibility / viability, and partner with product as a peer
• Strong proficiency in at least one modern backend language (e.g., Java, Kotlin, Go, Python, Scala) and comfort working across services, data, and infrastructure
• Strong experience with cloud platforms (AWS preferred) and container orchestration (Kubernetes), plus modern CI/CD and observability tooling
• Solid understanding of data modelling, stream­ing/batch processing, and experimentation frameworks
• Has architected scalable, high traffic services that translate a product vision into an end to end technical system
• Practical experience with AI developer tools (e.g., Claude, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Codex, Kiro), including evaluating adoption, usage depth, and impact on developer workflows and outcomes.
• Strong cross‑functional collaboration skills: able to partner with marketing, product, data science, architecture, and legal to make high‑quality trade‑offs
• Experience mentoring senior engineers, building healthy engineering cultures, and influencing without formal authority

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with marketing technology, ad platforms, or growth/optimization stacks
• Active immersion in the AI ecosystem – relationships with frontier labs, agent platforms, or AI‑native startups treated as a meaningful signal of genuine engagement, not just familiarity.
• Familiarity with AI/ML in production—model integration patterns, evaluation, safety guardrails
• Comfort operating in pre‑playbook spaces where hypotheses will be wrong, experiments will fail, and rapid iteration is required
• Proven ability to translate ambiguous strategy into executable technical roadmaps, balancing near‑term delivery with long‑term architecture

The total cash range for this position in Seattle is $231,000.00 to $323,500.00. Employees in this role have the potential to increase their pay up to $369,500.00, 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. Learn more about life at Expedia Group at https://careers.expediagroup.com/life.

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.

Important notice

Employment opportunities and job offers at Expedia Group will always come from Expedia Group's Talent Acquisition and hiring teams. Never share sensitive personal information unless you are confident of the recipient. Expedia Group does not extend job offers via email or messaging tools to individuals with whom we have not made prior contact. Our email domain is @expediagroup.com. The official place to find and apply for roles is https://careers.expediagroup.com/jobs.

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.