Director of Software Engineering - Data & AI

The Data and AI organization is central to our Connected Trip strategy as its role is to gather, analyze, and interpret data to gain a deep understanding of our travelers and their behaviors including experimentation, preferences, needs and expectations. These insights inform, validate & steer the traveler product vision and traveler interventions. Additionally, the team is responsible for core ML capabilities such as ranking, relevance, recommendation and semantic understanding of our products.

The key capabilities owned by this organization:

• Data Products and Intent Modelling

Customer intent and key canonical data models and data products to enable strong insights, decision making and alignment across our Connected Trip vision.

• Experimentation Platforms

Our experimentation platform is industry leading comprehensively covering the entire experimentation lifecycle from design, metric calculation, statistical analysis right through to launch. Experimentation scenarios are comprehensive and vast across our global product estate for example web, app, personalisation, segmentation, backend services and AI interactions patterns.

• AI Application Platform

Foundational platform that enables compliant, secure agentic workflows with integrated context, memory and steering 

• Data Engineering

Partner with tracks and teams across Booking.com to ensuring that our operational data is ingested into the right models, data sets with clear lineage and ownership

Role specification

We are looking for a technology leader to lead Data from an Engineering perspective partnering with the Data and Product leaders to deliver on our ambition for the Connected Trip. The role will need to evolve our Experimentation platform to the next generation and be focused on Software Engineering related to data, analytics, models, AI and ingestion. To be successful in this role you need to have:

• Deep technical experience related in Software Engineering and Data
• Experience with Big Data systems and projects
• Experience with Data ETL (Extraction, Transformation & Load), data architecture, schema design, and data modeling
• Experience of AI technologies and use within the data ecosystem
• Working knowledge of cloud based data capabilities on AWS
• Experience with Experimentation platforms in order to evolve the platform to the next-generation of A/B testing platforms that empowers Booking.com to make data-driven decisions for its products and services
• Good understanding of statistical methods needed for experimentation, measurement and in a highly scaled and compute intensive framework in order to continue to grow our platforms including audience split testing, power measures, integrating forward looking measures like future expected value.
• Experience in data privacy and data security related topics specifically to ensure that privacy requirements are factored into segmentation, intent modeling by design

Responsabilities

People & Function Leadership 

• Lead, inspire and motivate your Engineering function through leading by example and defining what success looks like, giving ownership & providing clarity when necessary
• Line manage Senior Managers as well as top technical talent, such as Principals.
• Communicate strategy in a compelling manner to multiple teams and stakeholders
• Foster inclusion by holding self and others accountable
• Drive people centric initiatives that enable workforce diversity
• Partner in and outside of our Business unit to lead and shape the people agenda 
• Create a learning environment by coaching, maintaining two-way feedback, helping people extract & share personal learnings, and supporting teams to constantly adapt
• Foster the engineering culture; innovate, work as a team and celebrate success
• Build a world class team through nurturing, attracting, and retaining tech talent from around the world
• Empower your teams to do their best work at Booking.com 
• Be curious, learn, iterate and shape our culture 

Technology, Craft & Delivery Leadership  

• Lead, influence and own delivery within your function including department goals
• Partner with other functions and business units to deliver on our strategic agenda 
• Maintain focus on the end goal, minimise risk and remove roadblocks for our strategic agenda
• Ensure clear and effective communication at all levels: proactively keep all stakeholders informed of what’s happening, upcoming changes, projects, issues and risks 
• Foster mastery in engineering craftsmanship across Booking.com including shaping ways of working
• Own Technology-wide topics and help lead and grow the department
• Embed Agile ways of working and values within the organisation
• Identify problems and significantly improve, change or adapt existing methods and techniques drawing from personal experiences and feedback
• Drive a DevOps culture

Technology, Architecture & Product Strategy  

• Shape, define and build new services, processes and operational plans in alignment with the commercial and financial needs of the business
• Lead, take ownership and shape the technology strategic objectives and roadmaps
• Be a strategic thought partner and influence stakeholders across the Accommodations and the broader business to set and align the strategic direction of your function
• Make decisions in complex and ambiguous situations, and guide others in their decision making by recognizing and challenging assumptions, introducing relevant data and multiple perspectives
• Ensure that the Booking architecture principles and engineering practices are adhered to, and that there is direction and alignment for each product. 
• Anticipate the need for changes based on context, and set renewed courses of action to engage teams and achieve goals, while striving to make the impact clear and understandable
• Drive innovation in your function
• Own the architecture across your function

Skills & Experience

• Extensive Tech Leadership experience with demonstrated success of building, shaping and leading a cross functional Engineering function or business unit at scale (50+ people) 
• Industry experience at fast moving, innovative global technology companies
• Experience operating large, Internet scale applications and distributed systems spanning multiple languages, platforms, front and back end services, networks and public cloud platforms. 
• Deep understanding of technology, with a proven track record of designing and building platforms at scale
• Highly familiar with the topology of their environment and all of their systems
• Proven ability to contribute to system design, architecture, and problem solving conversations. Ability to get deep into technical details when needed. 
• Able to provide technical direction to the teams (driving tech strategy, making build v buy decisions, prioritising etc.) 
• Great collaboration on technology topics; the successful candidate should be able to spar with their counterparts in other organisations, including Senior Architects and Fellows. 
• Demonstrable experience of working in Agile environments and more importantly an Agile culture and ethos 
• Demonstrable experience of setting, leading and influencing both the Engineering and Business strategy to the medium and long-term 
• Experience with managing and coaching teams of senior tech leaders including building and growing teams
• Independent, pragmatic and proactive work attitude
• Well versed in Engineering Craftsmanship 
• Building a DevOps culture
• Be humble and human 
• Excellent communication skills
• Strong commercial acumen

If your application is successful, your personal data may be used for a pre-employment screening check by a third party as permitted by applicable law. Depending on the vacancy and applicable law, a pre-employment screening may include employment history, education and other information (such as media information) that may be necessary for determining your qualifications and suitability for the position.