Principal Software Development Engineer - Cloud Platform

Principal Software Development Engineer

Our Technology Team partners with teams across Expedia Group to create innovative products, services, and tools that deliver high‑quality experiences for travelers, partners, and employees. The role serves as the technical architect for our Cloud Platform organization, reporting to the VP of Cloud Platform.

The primary responsibilities include:

• Lead Architectural Evolution
  :
  Own the transition to a Cell‑Based Architecture, moving away from fragile, monolithic clusters to isolated failure domains that enable confident horizontal scaling.
• Modernize Kubernetes & Infrastructure
  :
  Define the K8s strategy focused on multi‑cluster management, service mesh, automated scaling, and a "Golden Path" that guides engineers toward best practices by default.
• Hardened Reliability & Observability
  :
  Set SRE standards across the organization, expanding beyond dashboards to causal observability, automated incident response, and rigorous SLO/SLI management to root‑cause systemic instability.
• Optimize Cloud Economics
  :
  Lead the technical Fin Ops strategy, building tooling that provides cost‑per‑service visibility tied directly to business value.
• Support the Developer Workflow
  :
  Build agent‑friendly infrastructure, including standardized Dev Containers and transient environments that enable fast, isolated iteration without impacting shared state.

• Extensive professional software development experience designing, building, and operating large‑scale, cloud‑native distributed systems and platform services on Kubernetes.
• Proven ownership of critical services or multi‑service platforms, including responsibility for system design (LLD), API design, data modeling, deployment, and ongoing operational health.
• Deep expertise with at least one major public cloud provider and core platform technologies (compute, networking, storage, service discovery, security, observability, and CI/CD).
• Demonstrated ability to make high‑impact architectural decisions, navigate complex trade‑offs, and guide multiple teams toward coherent, long‑term technical direction.
• Familiarity with AI‑driven systems, tools, or workflows and applying AI/ML concepts to real‑world products within cloud or platform environments.
• Deep knowledge of observability patterns (Open Telemetry, Prometheus, distributed tracing).
• Expert‑level understanding of Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Pulumi) and CI/CD at scale.
• Proficiency in Go, Rust, or similar languages used in modern platform engineering.

• Track record of defining and evolving multi‑year technical strategies for cloud and developer platform ecosystems, and successfully driving adoption of shared platforms across many teams.
• Experience designing and operating highly available, globally distributed systems at internet scale, including capacity planning, performance optimization, and robust failure handling.
• Safely integrate and operate AI/ML‑enabled solutions that improve outcomes—such as intelligent routing, predictive scaling, or automated remediation embedded in platform services—with appropriate safeguards.
• Advanced experience applying AI/ML techniques to cloud and platform problems (e.g., cost optimization, anomaly detection, performance tuning) and partnering with data/ML teams to product ionize these capabilities.
• Systems Architect:
  Deep understanding of cloud plumbing, latency, unit economics, and failure domains.
• Reliability‑First:
  Experience carrying pagers for global‑scale systems with a healthy paranoia about state, consistency, and cascading failures.
• Hands‑on:
  Prototype complex infrastructure changes quickly and refine them to production‑grade quality.

San Jose Range: $ – $. Potential to increase up to $ based on performance.

• Full benefits package including medical, dental, and vision insurance.
• Generous paid time off, parental leave, and a flexible work model.
• Travel-related perks: wellness & travel reimbursement, travel discounts, and International Airlines Travel Agent (IATAN) membership.
• Career development resources and a vibrant, inclusive community.

Expedia Group 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, and the employer will provide the SSA and DHS with information from each new employee's I‑9 to confirm work authorization.