Director, Software Development Engineering - Air Shopping Platform

Expedia Expedia · Hospitality · Seattle, WA

Expedia is seeking a Director of Software Development Engineering to lead the Air Shopping Platform. This role involves defining technical vision, architecture, and roadmap for large-scale services, fostering operational excellence, and safely integrating AI/ML-enabled solutions. The ideal candidate will have extensive experience in large-scale system design, integrating AI-driven systems, and expertise in Information Retrieval, including ML embeddings-based vector searches for search and recommendation platforms.

What you'd actually do

  1. Lead and inspire engineering teams to deliver scalable, resilient, and high-quality software solutions across multiple domains.
  2. Define and drive the technical vision, architecture, and roadmap for large-scale services and platforms, ensuring alignment with business goals.
  3. Provide strategic oversight on system design, API development, and data modeling to enable secure, maintainable, and performant systems.
  4. Foster a culture of operational excellence, continuous improvement, and collaboration across engineering, product, and cross-functional teams.
  5. Safely integrate and operate AI/ML-enabled solutions that improve outcomes, championing best practices in responsible AI deployment.

Skills

Required

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field; or equivalent related professional experience.
  • 12+ years of relevant professional experience; with 5+ years managing teams.
  • Extensive engineering leadership experience managing multi-service or multi-domain teams delivering complex software solutions.
  • Demonstrated expertise in large-scale system design, architecture, and technical decision making.
  • Proven track record of integrating AI-driven systems, tools, or workflows and applying AI/ML concepts to real world products.
  • Expert in classic and modern technical approaches to Information Retrieval in ecommerce Search and Recommendation platforms, including systems like Elasticsearch/Lucene and ML embeddings-based vector searches for semantic, free text search and recommendations systems.

Nice to have

  • Experience driving architectural transformation and modernization initiatives for large, distributed systems.
  • Demonstrated success in leading engineering organizations through periods of high growth, change, or complexity.
  • Expertise in full stack engineering, with a proven ability to operate across multiple technical domains and platforms.
  • Track record of championing data-driven decision making and operational excellence for mission-critical systems.
  • Deep understanding of safely scaling AI/ML-enabled solutions, including risk mitigation and ethical considerations.

What the JD emphasized

  • Proven track record of integrating AI-driven systems, tools, or workflows and applying AI/ML concepts to real world products.
  • Expert in classic and modern technical approaches to Information Retrieval in ecommerce Search and Recommendation platforms, including systems like Elasticsearch/Lucene and ML embeddings-based vector searches for semantic, free text search and recommendations systems.
  • Deep understanding of safely scaling AI/ML-enabled solutions, including risk mitigation and ethical considerations.

Other signals

  • integrating AI/ML-enabled solutions
  • applying AI/ML concepts to real world products
  • ML embeddings-based vector searches for semantic, free text search and recommendations systems
  • safely scaling AI/ML-enabled solutions