Principal Software Development Engineer; Kubernetes

Principal Software Development Engineer (Kubernetes, AWS)

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.

In this role, you will:

• Design and implement core platform components: evolve our Kubernetes-based environment, focusing on multi-tenancy, network policy, resource management, and service mesh integration (e.g., Istio, Linkerd).
• Architect for scale and reliability: lead the technical design for scaling our control plane and data plane to handle a 10x increase in services and traffic; define and implement SLOs for the platform.
• Improve the developer control plane: design and build the next generation of our CI/CD pipelines and Git Ops workflows; drive the strategy for our internal developer portal (e.g., Backstage) to unify tooling, documentation, and service lifecycle management.
• Automate infrastructure lifecycle: author and maintain production-grade Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform and/or Crossplane; eliminate manual toil by automating cluster provisioning, node lifecycle, and dependency upgrades.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship: act as a force multiplier; mentor senior engineers, lead architecture review sessions, and author RFCs to build consensus on significant technical decisions; influence beyond the team to application developers and SREs.
• Production debugging: serve as the final escalation point for complex, cross-cutting production incidents that involve the underlying platform, from kernel-level issues to CNI bugs to distributed‑system failures.
• Collaborate across product management, architecture, and engineering leads to deliver capabilities that enable our developer community to function at a high capacity.
• Explore and use a wide variety of technologies and tools such as Java, Go, AWS, Docker, Hashi Corp Tools (Terraform, Consul, Vagrant, Vault, Nomad), Kubernetes, Argo, Istio, Helm, etc.
• Advocate for operational excellence (unit testing, SLAs, resilience and scalability programming).
• Take ownership of high‑stress scenarios by remaining calm, employing critical thinking, and making data‑driven decisions.

• 8+ years of experience in infrastructure automation, configuration management, or container orchestration.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in a related technical field, or equivalent professional experience.
• Strong programming skills in one or more languages:
  Java, Go, Python, or Ruby.
• Experience in cloud computing with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and containerization with Docker and Kubernetes/EKS.

• Experience with stateless and stateful workloads, service mesh or service discovery, monitoring, alerting, and logging.
• Understanding of security development principles such as token management, encryption, and certificates.
• Experience with continuous integration tools like Jenkins or similar.
• Experience building self‑service technology platform capabilities, particularly in the container compute, traffic management, or API management spaces.
• Experience mentoring other engineers and establishing standards for operational excellence and code quality at a multi‑project level.

San Jose: $249,000 – $348,500 (potential to increase up to $398,500 based on performance). Seattle: $231,000 – $323,500 (potential to increase up to $369,500 based on performance). Starting pay will vary based on location, budget, and individual qualifications.

We provide a full benefits package, including medical, dental, vision, paid time off, an Employee Assistance Program, wellness and travel reimbursement, travel discounts, and an International Airlines Travel Agent (IATAN) membership.

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. 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.