Software Development Engineer II - C++

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

Our Technology Team partners with teams across Expedia Group 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.

This role sits in Expedia Group’s core C++ engineering group, responsible for building and optimizing high‑performance C++ systems that power millions of travel experiences worldwide.

Make an Impact!

What’s the first thing you do when planning travel? You search for flights—and the Expedia Flights team powers one of the world’s largest flight shopping platforms, handling over 200M daily queries and hundreds of thousands of bookings across brands like Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity. We build and run a proprietary Best Fare Search engine, which is running on AWS, and leverage machine learning on terabytes of data to show customers the right content.
We’re looking for a Software Development Engineer who’s passionate about high-scale, modern technology, where you'll deliver high‑performance C++ systems that support critical, large‑scale travel workloads. to help deliver a next-generation flight search experience and seamlessly integrated services that enable an effortless customer journey across platforms.

In this role, you will:

• Design, develop, test, and maintain services and components, with a focus on clean API design, robust data modeling, and reliable system behavior

• Implement high‑quality, well‑tested C++ code; participate in code reviews; and help improve engineering standards, tooling, and best practices across the team

• Collaborate closely with product, design, and partner engineering teams to deliver features end‑to‑end, balancing technical quality with delivery timelines

• Work across multiple services or components within a domain, helping to diagnose production issues, improve performance, and contribute to operational excellence

• Use telemetry and diagnostics (metrics, logs, tracing, profiling tools, experimentation frameworks) to understand system behavior, troubleshoot issues, and make data‑informed decisions

• Collaborate with and learn from more senior engineers, incorporating feedback into designs and implementations to continually raise your technical bar

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field; or equivalent related professional experience

• 2+ years of relevant professional software engineering experience

• Professional software development experience with ownership of services or components within a broader system

• Proficiency in C++ is a must, with hands‑on experience in API design, data modeling, and system design

• Experience building, testing, deploying, and operating backend or full‑stack services in production environments, including participation in on‑call or incident response rotations as appropriate

• Solid foundation in algorithms, data structures, and object‑oriented design

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building high‑performance, production‑grade C++ systems, with an interest in performance optimization, memory efficiency, concurrency, and reliability at scale

• Strong foundation in systems design and API development, including designing maintainable interfaces, data models, and improving existing architectures within complex distributed environments

• Demonstrated experience improving engineering quality through:

  • Working with large codebases

  • Refactoring legacy code

  • Optimizing performance‑critical paths

  • Strengthening observability

  • Advancing testing and operational practices

• Experience using telemetry and diagnostics (metrics, logs, tracing, profiling tools, experimentation frameworks) to analyze system behavior, troubleshoot complex issues, and drive data‑informed technical decisions

• Exposure to integrating intelligent or AI‑enabled capabilities into backend systems — such as inference APIs, personalization features, or AI‑assisted engineering workflows — with interest in leveraging emerging technologies to enhance system performance and developer productivity

Please note that this role is only available in Seattle, WA, in alignment with our flexible work model, which requires employees to be in-office at least three days a week. We are unable to offer relocation assistance for this role.

The total cash range for this position in Seattle is $119,000.00 to $166,500.00. Employees in this role have the potential to increase their pay up to $190,500.00, 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, or veteran status. 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.