AI Solutions Principal

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.

AI Solutions Principal

Introduction to the Team

Travel Partnerships and Advertising helps partners, including hotels, airlines, destination marketing organizations (DMOs) and more, deliver excellent traveler and B2B experiences. We drive growth for our partners and the Expedia Group marketplace through competitive supply, our leading advertising and travel media network and affiliate solutions.

The AI Solutions Principal is a highly influential individual contributor who shapes the technical direction of Expedia Group's data and AI capabilities. In this role, you will operate at the intersection of executive strategy and hands-on engineering — translating ambiguous business challenges into clearly scoped, delegable engineering initiatives while mentoring senior talent and advocating for scalable, future-ready solutions.

In this role, you will:

• Translate complex, ambiguous business requirements into well-scoped engineering projects and guide teams toward sound technology decisions.

• Architect and influence complex data systems, establishing best practices, design standards, and recommended toolsets across multiple domains.

• Develop and communicate a north star vision for your domain, advocating for initiatives that remove long-term technical roadblocks.

• Partner with technologists across Expedia Group to collaboratively solve problems and support a community of engineering practice.

• Build relationships with leaders across the organization to understand business challenges and apply a technology lens to deliver impactful solutions.

• Design scalable, resilient, and highly available distributed systems for data extraction, ingestion, and large-scale data processing.

• Stay current on industry trends in AI, machine learning, and data engineering — identifying opportunities for adoption and recognizing when new trends are premature or ephemeral.

• Contribute to and influence organizational technology strategy, product vision, and cross-domain integration decisions.

• Actively mentor senior individual contributors, identify rising talent, and coach the broader data engineering community within your domains.

• Lead solution design relating to advancements in data engineering, cloud data platforms, data modeling, business intelligence, and data science.

• Communicate technology choices and design patterns verbally and in writing to organization-wide audiences, including executive stakeholders.

• Drive principles and practices for software that is testable, observable, cost-optimized, and operationally excellent across multi-project scopes.

Experience and Qualifications

Required:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field with 12+ years of relevant experience; or Master's degree in a related technical field with 10+ years of relevant experience; or equivalent related professional experience

• Demonstrated experience defining data engineering and architecture best practices at a department or organizational level

• Proficiency in one or more development languages: Java, Python, or Scala

• Deep expertise in data architecture, data modeling, streaming technology, data validation, and performance optimization

• Experience architecting distributed systems and building high-performance, scalable data products

• Proficient communication skills with the ability to present technical strategy to executive leadership and cross-functional teams

Preferred:

• Experience with machine learning, data science platforms, or AI-driven solution design

• Familiarity with cloud data platforms and enterprise information management

• Experience with cost optimization strategies for large-scale data infrastructure

• Background providing technical assessment and feedback in peer performance reviews

#LI-DNI

The total cash range for this position in Austin 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.expediggroup.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.