Principal Software Development Engineer - Loyalty

Expedia Expedia · Hospitality · CA

Principal Software Development Engineer to lead the technical strategy and architecture for an AI-empowered Loyalty charter, designing and delivering next-generation, intelligent engagement experiences powered by modern AI and agentic systems. This role involves driving system design across multiple distributed engineering teams, partnering with Product and Data Science to build scalable, reliable, and innovative solutions, and hands-on technical leadership in architecting agentic systems and integrating AI/LLMs into production environments.

What you'd actually do

  1. Lead the architectural vision, design, and delivery of complex software solutions across multiple technical domains to enable AI powered loyalty offers and more.
  2. Drive system design, API development, and data modeling to ensure secure, maintainable, and high-performing platforms.
  3. Guide and mentor engineering teams, fostering technical excellence and innovation across projects and domains.
  4. Safely integrate and operate AI/ML-enabled solutions that improve outcomes, championing best practices in responsible AI deployment.
  5. Optimize operational excellence by implementing robust software development practices and scalable engineering processes.

Skills

Required

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field; or equivalent related professional experience
  • 12+ years of relevant professional experience
  • Demonstrated expertise in large-scale system architecture, technical decision making, and delivery of complex multi-domain solutions
  • Hands-on experience designing, building, and shipping AI-powered products using LLMs in production environments
  • Experience architecting agentic systems (multi-step reasoning, tool use, orchestration frameworks, memory, evaluation loops)
  • Experience integrating AI systems into scalable, high-availability platforms with real-time decisioning requirements
  • Deep expertise in distributed systems design, APIs, event-driven architectures, and scalable backend systems
  • Experience building personalization, experimentation, recommendation, loyalty, or growth platforms at scale
  • Exceptional written and verbal communication skills; able to articulate complex AI and architectural concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
  • Builds alignment across teams without formal authority

Nice to have

  • Experience leading architectural transformation and modernization initiatives for large, distributed systems
  • Experience in loyalty, personalization, offers, growth platforms, fintech, or consumer-scale products is strongly preferred
  • Strong understanding of modern AI system design patterns including RAG, embeddings, vector search, prompt orchestration, model evaluation, and observability
  • Expertise in full stack engineering with 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
  • Strong judgment in making trade-offs between innovation, speed, scalability, and reliability

What the JD emphasized

  • Hands-on experience designing, building, and shipping AI-powered products using LLMs in production environments
  • Experience architecting agentic systems (multi-step reasoning, tool use, orchestration frameworks, memory, evaluation loops)
  • Experience integrating AI systems into scalable, high-availability platforms with real-time decisioning requirements
  • Exceptional written and verbal communication skills; able to articulate complex AI and architectural concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders

Other signals

  • AI-empowered Loyalty charter
  • intelligent engagement experiences powered by modern AI and agentic systems
  • architecting agentic systems (multi-step reasoning, tool use, orchestration frameworks, memory, evaluation loops)
  • integrating AI systems into scalable, high-availability platforms
  • Hands-on experience designing, building, and shipping AI-powered products using LLMs in production environments