Senior Technical Lead, Marketing Technology & AI

Expedia, Inc.; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 185,000 - 258,000; Full time

Job summary

Expedia Group in Austin seeks a senior technical leader to scale software, data, automation, and AI capabilities powering Digital Operations. You will prototype, deliver, and set direction across APIs, data products, and AI services.

You will mentor engineers, align stakeholders, and drive reusable patterns while maintaining security, privacy, and reliability in partner-facing marketing tech.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or related field.
• 8+ years of production software, data, ML, or AI-enabled systems experience.
• Experience as senior technical contributor or tech lead.
• Proficiency in at least one programming language (Python, Java, Kotlin, TS, or Go).
• Experience designing APIs, distributed systems, cloud services, and data pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Lead technical discovery, architecture, prototyping, and delivery for software, data, ML, and AI solutions.
• Build production services, APIs, data pipelines, workflows, and AI-enabled apps improving campaign execution and personalization.
• Design and implement LLM-enabled capabilities and agent workflows.
• Connect marketing tech, data platforms, analytics, and AI services into end-to-end solutions.
• Mentor engineers and promote reusable APIs and data products.
• Evolve prototypes into production with governance and reliability.

Skills

Programming languages

API design

Distributed systems

Data pipelines

AI/ML systems

Leadership

Education

CS/Engineering degree

Tools

Spark

Snowflake

Databricks

Kafka

Airflow

dbt

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.

Introduction to the team:

Travel Partnerships and Advertising helps partners—including hotels, airlines, destination marketing organizations, and other travel businesses—deliver excellent traveler and B2B experiences. We support partner growth and the Expedia Group marketplace through competitive supply, our advertising and travel media network, and affiliate solutions.

Within Supply Marketing organization, the Digital Operations team enables marketing teams to plan, activate, personalize, measure, and optimize digital experiences at scale. We operate across web, email, SMS, push, paid media, audience activation, experimentation, and measurement, connecting people, processes, platforms, data, and AI into a reliable operating system for partner-facing marketing.

About the role:

We are looking for a senior technical leader to help build and scale the software, data, automation, and AI capabilities that power Digital Operations. This role sits at the intersection of marketing operations, product, analytics, data, engineering, and enterprise technology.

You will turn operational pain points and ambiguous business needs into durable technical solutions that improve campaign velocity, execution quality, audience readiness, personalization, measurement, and team productivity. You will lead technical discovery and architecture, build and integrate production capabilities, and establish repeatable patterns that allow Digital Operations to move faster without compromising security, privacy, reliability, governance, or the partner experience.

This is a hands‑on technical leadership role. You will be expected to prototype and deliver solutions directly, while also setting direction, aligning stakeholders, mentoring engineers, and helping partner teams adopt common platforms, APIs, data products, workflows, and AI capabilities.

In this role, you will:

• Lead technical discovery, architecture, prototyping, and delivery for software, data, machine learning, and generative AI solutions.
• Build production-quality services, APIs, data pipelines, workflow automation, and AI-enabled applications that improve campaign execution, personalization, audience activation, measurement, and productivity.
• Design and implement LLM-enabled capabilities, including retrieval‑augmented generation, intelligent assistants, agent workflows, tool calling, context design, evaluation frameworks, and human‑in‑the‑loop controls.
• Connect marketing technologies, enterprise data platforms, analytics systems, experimentation platforms, APIs, and AI services into reliable end‑to‑end solutions.
• Translate business and analytics questions into measurable technical outcomes, defining success metrics, data requirements, instrumentation, and feedback loops.
• Serve as the technical lead for complex, cross‑functional initiatives by clarifying ambiguity, making architecture trade‑offs, sequencing delivery, and unblocking partner teams.
• Help teams adopt reusable APIs, data products, AI capabilities, engineering patterns, and development practices.
• Evolve successful prototypes into production‑ready solutions with clear ownership, documentation, governance, reliability, and operational readiness.
• Mentor engineers through architecture reviews, design sessions, code reviews, technical demonstrations, and documentation.

Experience and Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience building and delivering production software, data, machine learning, or AI‑enabled systems.
• Experience as a senior technical individual contributor, technical lead, staff‑level engineer, principal consultant, solutions architect, or equivalent.
• Proficiency in at least one programming language, such as Python, Java, Kotlin, TypeScript, or Go.
• Experience designing APIs, distributed systems, cloud services, data pipelines, and event‑driven architectures.
• Hands‑on experience with data engineering, analytics engineering, experimentation, measurement, or ML/AI systems.
• Experience building or deploying AI‑enabled applications, including LLM applications, RAG, agents, workflow automation, model evaluation, or intelligent search.
• Experience translating ambiguous business problems into technical plans and measurable outcomes.
• Demonstrated ability to lead through influence across multiple teams without direct reporting responsibility.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or a related technical field; or Equivalent related professional experience.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience with marketing technology, customer data, digital experience, campaign management, CRM, advertising, personalization, or lifecycle marketing.
• Experience supporting B2B, partner‑facing, or travel‑related digital experiences.
• Experience with cloud platforms, containers, CI/CD, observability, and infrastructure‑as‑code.
• Familiarity with technologies such as Spark, Snowflake, Databricks, Kafka, Airflow, dbt, or equivalent platforms.
• Experience designing governed, permission‑aware, privacy‑conscious data and AI solutions.
• Experience defining AI evaluation methods, quality metrics, guardrails, human review, and continuous improvement practices.
• Experience as a Forward Deployed Engineer, Field Engineer, Solutions Architect, Technical Consultant, startup engineer, or founding engineer.

What success looks like

You help TPM digital experience teams adopt reusable software, data, and AI capabilities faster, with less duplicated effort. Your solutions connect technical delivery to measurable outcomes such as improved campaign velocity, audience quality, personalization, conversion, efficiency, and marketing productivity. You establish responsible practices for security, privacy, observability, testing, governance, and human oversight.

The total cash range for this position in Austin is $184,500.00 to $258,000.00. Employees in this role have the potential to increase their pay up to $295,000.00, which is the top of the range, based on ongoing, demonstrated, and sustained performance in the role.

The total cash range for this position in Chicago is $171,500.00 to $240,000.00. Employees in this role have the potential to increase their pay up to $274,500.00, which is the top of the range, based on ongoing, demonstrated, and sustained performance in the role.

The total cash range for this position in Seattle is $184,500.00 to $258,000.00. Employees in this role have the potential to increase their pay up to $295,000.00, 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.

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.