Senior Software Development Engineer, Loyalty - Back End

Expedia Group brands power global travel for everyone, everywhere. We design cutting-edge tech to make travel smoother and more memorable, and we create groundbreaking solutions for our partners. Our diverse, vibrant, and welcoming community is essential in driving our success.

Why Join Us?

To shape the future of travel, people must come first. Guided by our Values and Leadership Agreements, we foster an open culture where everyone belongs, differences are celebrated and know that when one of us wins, we all win.

We provide a full benefits package, including exciting travel perks, generous time-off, parental leave, a flexible work model (with some pretty cool offices), and career development resources, all to fuel our employees' passion for travel and ensure a rewarding career journey. We’re building a more open world. Join us.

Introduction to the Team:  

Expedia Technology teams partner with our Product teams to create innovative products, services, and tools to deliver high-quality experiences for travelers, partners, and our employees. A singular technology platform powered by data and machine learning provides secure, differentiated, and personalized experiences that drive loyalty and traveler satisfaction.  

The Loyalty Engineering organization powers continuous engagement, re-engagement, and re-acquisition for travelers worldwide. We build the systems that create a durable growth flywheel for Expedia, deepening traveler relationships while driving measurable business impact across brands and markets. 

In this role, you will contribute to the technical strategy and architecture for the AI-empowered Loyalty charter — developing and delivering next-generation, intelligent engagement experiences powered by modern AI and agentic systems. You will work with multiple distributed engineering teams, partnering closely with Product, Data Science, and platform leaders to build scalable, reliable, and innovative solutions. 

In this role, you will:

• Design, build, and evolve reliable, scalable backend services and APIs that power key Loyalty experiences across brands and platforms.

• Lead end-to-end solution design, including low-level system design, API contracts, and data models, ensuring performance, security, and maintainability.

• Own complex services through the full software development lifecycle, from technical design and implementation to deployment, monitoring, and incident resolution.

• Collaborate with product, architecture, and cross-functional engineering teams to translate requirements into technical solutions that meet business and customer outcomes.

• Safely integrate and operate AI/ML‑enabled solutions that improve outcomes, including personalization, decisioning, or optimization within Loyalty systems.

• Apply backend engineering expertise across multiple domains within Loyalty, contributing to shared platforms, reusable components, and standardized engineering practices.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field; or Equivalent related professional experience.

• 8+ years of relevant professional experience.

• Proven ownership of one or more backend services, including responsibility for design, implementation, quality, deployment, and operational health.

• Strong proficiency in backend programming, API design, data modeling, and working with relational or NoSQL databases in distributed systems.

• Familiarity with AI-driven systems, tools, or workflows and applying AI/ML concepts to real world products.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience designing and evolving large‑scale, customer‑facing platforms using Java, including event‑driven and microservice‑based architectures, with deep expertise in RESTful API design, data modeling, security, and service reuse across domains.

• Experience designing and evolving high-scale, low-latency backend systems for customer-facing products in a complex ecosystem such as Loyalty or transactional platforms.

• Track record of leading technical design for multi-service solutions, including integration patterns, data contracts, and performance optimization across systems.

• Strong focus on reliability and operational excellence, including observability, incident management, and continuous improvement of service health.

• Hands-on experience integrating or operating AI/ML‑enabled components in backend services, such as recommendation engines, scoring services, or intelligent decision flows, and tailoring their use to Loyalty scenarios.

• Hands‑on experience integrating and operating AI/ML‑enabled capabilities in production, including use of developer AI tools such as Claude, GitHub Copilot, and Cursor to improve productivity, code quality, personalization, and automation outcomes.

• Safely integrates and operates AI/ML‑enabled solutions within backend Loyalty platforms, including evaluating model behavior, managing rollouts, and iterating based on data-driven insights.

• Experience in ad-tech and user targeting is a plus.

The total cash range for this position in San Jose is $199,000.00 to $278,500.00. Employees in this role have the potential to increase their pay up to $318,500.00, 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.

Expedia Group is proud to offer a wide range of benefits to support employees and their families, including medical/dental/vision, paid time off, and an Employee Assistance Program. To fuel each employee’s passion for travel, we offer a wellness & travel reimbursement, travel discounts, and an International Airlines Travel Agent (IATAN) membership. View our full list of benefits.

Accommodation requests

If you need assistance with any part of the application or recruiting process due to a disability, or other physical or mental health conditions, please reach out to our Recruiting Accommodations Team through the Accommodation Request.

We are proud to be named as a Best Place to Work on Glassdoor in 2024 and be recognized for award-winning culture by organizations like Forbes, TIME, Disability:IN, and others.

Expedia Group's family of brands includes: Brand Expedia®, Hotels.com®, Expedia® Partner Solutions, Vrbo®, trivago®, Orbitz®, Travelocity®, Hotwire®, Wotif®, ebookers®, CheapTickets®, Expedia Group™ Media Solutions, Expedia Local Expert®, CarRentals.com™, and Expedia Cruises™. © 2024 Expedia, Inc. All rights reserved. Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners. CST: 2029030-50

Employment opportunities and job offers at Expedia Group will always come from Expedia Group’s Talent Acquisition and hiring teams. Never provide sensitive, personal information to someone unless you’re confident who the recipient is. Expedia Group does not extend job offers via email or any other messaging tools to individuals with whom we have not made prior contact. Our email domain is @expediagroup.com. The official website to find and apply for job openings at Expedia Group is careers.expediagroup.com/jobs.

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.