Senior Software Development Engineer

Expedia Group Advertising builds the platforms and experiences that connect advertisers with millions of travelers worldwide. Our mission is to help partners reach the right traveler with the right message at the right time through intuitive advertiser experiences, high-performance ad delivery systems, and intelligent, AI-powered optimization.

We are looking for a Senior Software Development Engineer to join our Auction and Bidding team, where you will design, build, and optimize high-scale, high-performance, low-latency systems that power real-time ad auctions and bidding across our marketplace. You will collaborate closely with Product, Data Science, and Machine Learning engineers to turn ideas into production systems, improve marketplace efficiency and yield, and drive continuous optimization through experimentation. As a senior engineer on the team, you will shape technical direction, champion operational excellence, and consistently raise the technical bar as our platform and business continue to grow.

In this role, you will:

• Lead the design, implementation, and evolution of backend services that power ad auction and bidding capabilities and to serve relevant ads and increase advertiser reach to travelers across our ad platform
• Drive operational excellence by improving the reliability, scalability, and latency of mission-critical services
• Lead operational reviews that use data and incident learnings to drive systemic improvements in resilience, fault-tolerance and operational maturity
• Partner with Product, Data Scientists, and ML Engineers on features such as relevance optimization, targeting, and performance modeling, using experimentation to validate impact
• Apply LLMs and generative AI, where appropriate, to improve ad delivery and automate repetitive tasks at scale
• Mentor and develop engineers across levels through technical guidance, code reviews, and design feedback, consistently raising the team's technical bar

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field with 8+ years of experience, or Master's degree with 6+ years, or equivalent related professional experience
• Experience driving the end-to-end technical design and delivery of multiple complex, multi-quarter, cross-team projects
• Experience collaborating with product and business partners to identify problems and deliver scalable technical solutions
• Strong proficiency in at least one programming language (e.g., Java, Kotlin)
• Experience building and operating backend services in the cloud using real-time streaming technologies (e.g., Apache Flink/Kafka) and APIs(gRPC/Protobuf)
• Solid understanding of distributed systems, data flows, and operational best practices
• Proven track record of driving operational excellence for large-scale production services (e.g., availability, latency, on-call ownership, and incident reviews)
• Experience working with data-driven systems, Generative AI/ML-powered features, or experimentation platforms

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with big data tools and frameworks (e.g., PySpark, Databricks)
• Experience with advertising technologies (e.g., Ad serving, Auctions, and bidding)

Location:

Please note that this role is only available in Seattle, WA, in alignment with our flexible work model, which requires employees to be in the 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 $184,500.00 to $258,000.00. Employees in this role have the potential to increase their pay up to $295,000.00, 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.