Software Development Engineer III - Full Stack (Java/Kotlin, React.JS)

Introduction to the Team & Role Impact

The Expedia Group Cars team owns the end-to-end car rental shopping and booking journey across web and mobile platforms. We design and operate high-scale, distributed systems that power search, pricing, availability, comparison, and booking for millions of travelers globally.
Leveraging technologies such as Java, Kotlin, Spring, React, GraphQL, DynamoDB, Elasticsearch, and Redis, we build resilient, high-throughput services that operate at global scale. Our focus is on scalable architecture, clean API design, operational excellence, and continuous evolution of the Cars platform to support business growth and partner integrations.
As a SDE III, you will have significant ownership and technical influence within this ecosystem. You will lead complex, high-impact initiatives, drive architectural decisions across services, and translate ambiguous business problems into scalable technical solutions. Beyond delivery, you are expected to elevate engineering standards, mentor other engineers, improve system reliability and performance, and contribute to long-term technical strategy.
This role is ideal for a backend-leaning full-stack engineer who thrives in distributed systems, designs robust APIs and data models, and is comfortable contributing to frontend experiences when needed — while consistently driving operational rigor and measurable business impact

In this role, you will:

• Design, build, and evolve full stack services and web applications using Java/Kotlin, React.js, and related technologies to deliver resilient, scalable, and high‑quality customer and partner experiences.

• Lead end‑to‑end technical design for features and services, including system design (LLD), API design, and data modeling, ensuring clear contracts, robustness, and long‑term maintainability.

• Own the operational excellence of the services you build, including monitoring, alerting, incident response, and continuous improvement of performance, reliability, and security.

• Collaborate closely with product, design, and other engineering teams to break down complex business problems into technical solutions, drive execution, and deliver incremental value across multiple domains.

• Mentor other engineers through code reviews, design discussions, and best practices, raising the overall technical bar and fostering a culture of quality, experimentation, and learning.

• Safely integrate and operate AI/ML‑enabled solutions that improve outcomes, including familiarity with AI‑driven systems, tools, or workflows and applying AI/ML concepts to real world products.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field; or Equivalent related professional experience.

• 5+ years of relevant professional experience.

• Professional software development experience building and operating full stack applications or services using Java or Kotlin on the backend and React.js or similar modern JavaScript frameworks on the frontend.

• Proven experience owning the design, implementation, testing, deployment, and operational support of services or multi‑service systems in a production environment.

• Strong skills in system design (including low‑level design), RESTful or RPC API design, and relational or NoSQL data modeling, with a solid understanding of distributed systems fundamentals.

• Proficiency with modern software engineering practices such as automated testing, CI/CD, code reviews, and observability to ensure high‑quality, maintainable, and secure software.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience designing and evolving complex, high‑throughput, or highly available full stack systems at scale, including making architectural trade‑offs for performance, cost, and reliability.

• Demonstrated leadership in driving technical direction for a service or product area, influencing architecture across multiple services or domains, and coordinating delivery with cross‑functional teams.

• Deep experience with performance tuning, capacity planning, and improving operational excellence through metrics, dashboards, runbooks, and automated remediation.

• Familiarity with AI‑driven systems, tools, or workflows and applying AI/ML concepts to real world products, including safely integrating and operating AI/ML‑enabled capabilities in production services.

• Hands‑on experience leveraging AI‑assisted development or testing tools, or integrating ML‑based recommendations, personalization, or decisioning into full stack applications to improve customer or developer outcomes.