Senior ML Backend Engineer — Ads Platform

Expedia, Inc.; Chicago, Northern (IL, KY); Hybrid; USD 172,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Expedia Group is seeking a Senior Software Development Engineer to design and operate scalable backend services and ML-powered platforms for its advertising network in Chicago. You will blend software engineering with ML engineering to productionize intelligent features that improve advertiser outcomes.

You will lead end‑to‑end technical design, collaborate across product and ML teams, and drive deployment, monitoring, and continuous improvement of complex systems in a distributed environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree with 8+ years of experience, or Master’s degree with 6+ years, in a related technical field.
• Experience designing and building scalable backend services and distributed systems in production.
• Strong programming experience in Python and Java or Kotlin.
• 3+ years of hands‑on experience building, deploying, and operating machine learning or AI‑powered systems in production environments.
• Experience integrating ML models or AI capabilities into production software systems.
• Experience working with data and ML pipelines, including batch or streaming data processing and model inference workflows.
• Familiarity with cloud-native distributed systems and platforms such as AWS, Kubernetes, or equivalent.
• Experience collaborating with product and business partners to translate requirements into technical solutions.
• Proven ability to lead end‑to‑end technical design for complex systems and deliver them in production.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and evolution of backend APIs and distributed services powering advertiser experiences.
• Own the architecture of core platform services supporting campaign management, optimization, and intelligent decisioning.
• Build and operate production ML-enabled systems including recommendations and ranking.
• Lead the application of LLMs and generative AI to improve campaign setup and automation.
• Collaborate with software engineers and ML engineers to deliver batch and real-time systems.
• Drive end‑to‑end delivery from technical design through production deployment and monitoring.
• Establish and uphold engineering best practices across software and ML-powered systems.
• Mentor engineers and contribute to technical leadership within the team.

Skills

Backend services

Distributed systems

Python

Java/Kotlin

ML systems

AWS

Kubernetes

ML pipelines

LLMs / AI features

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree or higher

Master's degree in CS or related field

Tools

Spark

Model serving infra

CI/CD for ML

Job description

Expedia Group is seeking a Senior Software Development Engineer to design and operate scalable backend services and ML-powered platforms for its advertising network in Chicago. You will blend software engineering with ML engineering to productionize intelligent features that improve advertiser outcomes.

You will lead end‑to‑end technical design, collaborate across product and ML teams, and drive deployment, monitoring, and continuous improvement of complex systems in a distributed environment.