Principal Software Development Engineer

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. Principal Software Development Engineer Introduction to team Are you an experienced engineer passionate about building scalable, high-impact systems that power millions of traveler decisions every day? Expedia Group’s  Reviews Engineering team  is looking for a  Principal Engineer  to shape the technical vision and architecture of our next-generation  Reviews platform  — the trusted engine that collects, curates, enriches, and distributes traveler-generated reviews across our brands and partners globally. As part of the  Content domain , the Reviews platform plays a mission-critical role: helping travelers make confident booking decisions and enabling partners to understand and improve their guest experience. You’ll lead the design of resilient, compliant, and intelligent systems that operate at global scale — ensuring trust, reliability, and innovation at the heart of Expedia’s marketplace. In this role, you will: Architect and evolve  the end-to-end Reviews platform to acquire, process, and surface high-quality traveler reviews across Expedia Group brands Drive technical strategy  and platform modernization across all Reviews subdomains — Collection, Moderation, and Distribution — ensuring scalability, resilience, and compliance Define and influence cross-domain architecture , collaborating with teams across Content, Search, and Lodging to maximize data reuse and interoperability Lead system design  for large-scale, low-latency services that power customer-facing experiences and partner insights Contribute hands-on  by writing clean, performant, and production-ready code for complex distributed systems Collaborate with product and data science teams  to enable intelligent review insights through machine learning, moderation automation, and relevancy scoring Champion operational excellence , ensuring high availability (Tier-1 reliability), observability, and continuous improvement Mentor and elevate  other engineers by fostering strong engineering principles, code quality, and architectural rigor Influence technical roadmap and strategy , ensuring alignment with Expedia Group’s platform evolution and compliance standards Experience and Qualifications: 10+ years of engineering experience building  large-scale, distributed systems  in high-traffic environments Deep expertise in  Java/Kotlin, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, Spring Boot, caching and database platforms, CI/CD , and architectural design patterns Proven track record of designing  resilient, low-latency systems  that handle large-scale user-generated content or similar Tier-1 workloads Strong understanding of  cloud-native design , microservices architecture, and data pipelines Experience with  machine learning integration , content moderation, or text analytics is a plus Excellent collaborator who can influence across globally distributed teams Passionate about  platform thinking  — balancing reliability, developer productivity, and business agility Effective communicator with the ability to translate complex technical concepts for diverse audiences A  "One Expedia"  team player who values transparency, mentorship, and shared success Accommodation requests Expedia Group is committed to