Software Development Engineer III at Expedia in Rome, Lazio, Italy

Software Development Engineer III Location: Italy - Rome Expedia Group brands power global travel for everyone, everywhere. We design cutting-edge tech to make travel smoother and more memorable, and we create groundbreaking solutions for our partners. Our diverse, vibrant, and welcoming community is essential in driving our success. Why Join Us? To shape the future of travel, people must come first. Guided by our Values and Leadership Agreements, we foster an open culture where everyone belongs, differences are celebrated and know that when one of us wins, we all win. We provide a full benefits package, including exciting travel perks, generous time-off, parental leave, a flexible work model (with some pretty cool offices), and career development resources, all to fuel our employees' passion for travel and ensure a rewarding career journey. We’re building a more open world. Join us. Are you excited to build mission‑critical backend systems that power loyalty experiences for millions of travellers worldwide? Come build the future of travel with us!At Expedia Group, we design cutting‑edge technology that makes travel smoother and more memorable for our travellers and delivers innovative solutions for our partners. Our software engineers tackle some of the most complex challenges in global travel, building platforms and services that operate at massive scale across brands like Expedia, Hotels.com, Vrbo, and more. Within engineering, the Membership & Engagement organisation builds the platforms and experiences that power Expedia Group’s loyalty programmes, helping travellers earn, track, and redeem rewards while surfacing meaningful membership value across the end‑to‑end journey. The Loyalty Experience team owns the backend services, experience APIs and that power how travellers earn, track, and redeem rewards—and how loyalty value is surfaced throughout discovery, shopping, checkout, and post‑booking engagement, both on Mobile Native App and Web Platforms.We build and operate Kotlin/Java services and GraphQL/REST APIs that sit at the heart of loyalty, integrating with multiple brands and platforms at global scale. Our domain is high‑throughput and operationally critical, with clear expectations around reliability, latency, cost efficiency, security, and correctness. We partner closely with product, data, mobile, and web teams across time zones to deliver consistent, high‑quality experiences. In this role, you will: Design, build, and operate distributed backend services and GraphQL‑backed experience APIs that power loyalty features across web and native applications. Lead development efforts on significant features and services, delivering measurable impact across a team, product capability, or technical system. Design across multiple services, making trade‑offs explicit, owning low‑level system design (LLD), and evolving data models and success metrics within your problem space. Own always‑available, operationally critical systems, driving how we think about reliability, observability, incident response, security, and cost effectiveness. Collaborate closely with product managers, designers, mobile and web engineers, data teams, and platform partners to translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions. Lead and contribute to technical design reviews, code reviews, and architectural discussions, helping evolve engineering standards and shared practices. Drive simplification and tech‑debt reduction initiatives, aligning platform improvements and operational excellence with business outcomes. Instrument services with monitoring, logging, dashboards, SLIs/SLOs, and participate in on‑call rotations and incident response. Use modern JVM, cloud, GraphQL, and AI‑assisted development tooling where it improves developer productivity while maintaininghigh standards for quality, privacy, and security. Influence across your squad and adjacent teams through knowledge sharing, mentoring, and participation in communities of practice. You lead through code, design, and operational ownership rather than people management, consistently delivering results while positively impacting the broader organisation. Minimum Qualifications: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience. 5+ years of professional experience designing, building, and operating backend services in production environments. Strong experience with Kotlin and/or Java, building distributed systems and APIs (GraphQL and/or REST). Proven ability to own services end‑to‑end, including system design, implementation, testing, deployment, observability, and operational support. Solid understanding of distributed systems fundamentals, including concurrency, data modelling, API design, performance optimisation, and failure handling. Experience working in high‑availability, production‑critical environments with on‑call responsibilities. Preferred Qualifications: Experience building and evolving large‑scale backend platforms composed of multiple services, shared schemas, and common infrastructure. Demonstrated ownership of complex system design, navigating ambiguity and setting LLD conventions that others follow. Strong track record in operational excellence, including defining SLIs/SLOs, incident management, post‑incident reviews, and continuous improvement. Hands‑on experience working with cloud‑native architectures and modern observability tooling. Exposure to AI‑ or ML‑enabled systems, or using AI‑driven tools to improve development workflows, testing, diagnostics, or productivity. Experience collaborating across multiple teams and domains, influencing technical decisions beyond immediate ownership boundaries. Accommodation requests If you need assistance with any part of the application or recruiting process due to a disability, or other physical or mental health conditions, please reach out to our Recruiting Accommodations Team through the Accommodation Request. We are proud to be named as a Best Place to Work on Glassdoor in 2024 and be recognized for award-winning culture by organizations like Forbes, TIME, Disability:IN, and others. Expedia Group's family of brands includes: Brand Expedia®, Hotels.com®, Expedia® Partner Solutions, Vrbo®, trivago®, Orbitz®, Travelocity®, Hotwire®, Wotif®, ebookers®, CheapTickets®, Expedia Group™ Media Solutions, Expedia Local Expert®, CarRentals.com™, and Expedia Cruises™. © 2024 Expedia, Inc. All rights reserved. Trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners. CST: 2029030-50 Employment opportunities and job offers at Expedia Group will always come from Expedia Group’s Talent Acquisition and hiring teams. Never provide sensitive, personal information to someone unless you’re confident who the recipient is. Expedia Group does not extend job offers via email or any other messaging tools to individuals with whom we have not made prior contact. Our email domain is @expediagroup.com. The official website to find and apply for job openings at Expedia Group is careers.expediagroup.com/jobs. Expedia is committed to creating an inclusive work environment with a diverse workforce. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, disability or age.