Principal Data Engineer - Data & AI, Marketplace

About Us: At Booking.com, data drives our decisions. Technology is at our core and innovation is everywhere. But our company is more than datasets, lines of code or A/B tests. We’re the thrill of the first night in a new place. The excitement of the following morning. The friends you make. The journeys you take. The sights you see. And the food you sample. Through our products, partners and people, we can empower everyone to experience the world.

Role Description: 

This role is based in Amsterdam and sits within the Marketplace Business Unit (BU). Marketplace’s mission is to truly understand traveler needs and behavior across multiple verticals, design and implement common traveler-facing product experiences, steward travelers to the right vertical offering, and grow Connected Trips, where travelers not only book hotels or homes, but also flights, car rentals, rides, and local attractions with us.

As Principal Data Engineer, you'll be a technical leader spanning  Traveller Intelligence , Experimentation , Benefits & Relevance , and AI Experience . This is a cross-track role: your remit is to make data work across domain boundaries, not to own one domain and have others consume from it.

The opportunity here is a genuinely interesting one: Marketplace Data & AI spans multiple fast-growing tracks, each generating rich, distinct data — traveller behaviour, experimentation results, relevance signals, AI-generated data. As the org scales, there's real value in making that data work harder across boundaries: less duplicated effort, faster integration, more of the organisation building on a shared foundation. We're looking for someone who's tackled this kind of problem before — building shared data infrastructure, designing clean data products, or applying data mesh principles — and can bring that experience to help shape how we do it here, without assuming there's already one fixed answer. Part of the job is figuring out, with us, what actually fits.

First and foremost, though, we need a genuinely strong engineer: someone who understands data deeply — how it's modelled, how it moves, where it breaks — and who can go from architectural conversation to hands-on implementation without missing a beat. Data product or data mesh experience is a real advantage, but it's in service of that core craft, not a substitute for it.

You combine strong technical vision with hands-on depth — equally comfortable setting multi-quarter architectural direction and getting into the weeds of a gnarly pipeline or modelling problem. You mentor engineers across tracks, work closely with your Product counterpart to shape technical strategy, and represent Data Engineering craft at a senior level across Marketplace Data & AI.

Key Job Responsibilities and Duties: 

• Work across Marketplace tracks — Traveller Intelligence, Experimentation, Benefits & Relevance, AI Experience. To find where connecting data across boundaries unlocks the most value, and build the technical foundation to do it well

• Design and build the data models, pipelines, and platform interfaces that let one track's data be discovered, trusted, and used by another — applying data product or data mesh thinking where it genuinely fits, not as a fixed template

• Get hands-on with the hardest data engineering problems yourself: complex Spark/Flink pipelines, streaming architecture at scale, tricky modelling decisions, and performance issues nobody else has been able to crack

• Own the underlying infrastructure choices — orchestration, compute, storage, and deployment (Airflow, Kubernetes, Terraform) — needed to run reliable, scalable data pipelines in production

• Own end-to-end data health and production reliability across the domains you touch: define, monitor, and adjust relevant SLIs/SLOs; carry appropriate on-call/production support responsibilities; lead incident response and drive learning back into system design

• Propose what "good" looks like for shared data platforms at Booking.com, and pressure-test that thinking with architects, principals, and leads across tracks before asking anyone to adopt it

• Partner closely with SEMs, GPMs, and EMs across tracks to make sure any shared data investment is driven by what product teams actually need to build — not architectural elegance for its own sake

• Set and drive quarterly and yearly technical objectives in collaboration with Product counterparts and Engineering Manager peers across the tracks you work with

• Mentor engineers across Marketplace Data & AI; raise the technical bar for the Data Engineering craft community at Booking.com

• Stay current with developments in data engineering, data platforms, and AI-native data architecture, and bring that thinking back into Booking.com's platform

Additionally, you are a role model of the Booking.com values:

• Thrive on change and gets things done

• Demand a high standard of excellence in their craft

• Embrace the opportunity to improve

• Understand success starts with accountability and ownership

• Care more about being successful and reaching goals together than individually

• Curious, experiments and continuously learns

• Humble, open, friendly and remember that diversity gives us strength

Role Qualifications and Requirements:

• 12+ years of software development experience, including 3+ years in a lead/architect role

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent experience

• Deep technical fluency across the modern big data stack: workflow management (Airflow), stream and batch processing (Flink, Spark), data warehousing (Snowflake or equivalent)

• Strong hands-on experience with SQL and Python — you can still write and debug production code, not just review it; working knowledge of Scala or Java is a plus for Spark/Flink work

• Familiarity with dbt for analytics engineering workflows, since teams you'll work with use it day-to-day

• Experience with cloud infrastructure and orchestration: AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform

• Strong grounding in data modelling: conceptual, dimensional, and (ideally) data vault

• Experience building shared data infrastructure, data products, or applying data mesh principles — you've faced this class of problem before and have a point of view on what works and what doesn't

• Proven ability to influence and align technical direction across multiple teams and domains without formal authority over all of them

• Solid understanding of data quality and governance considerations, and how to design them in rather than bolt them on

• Ability to proactively manage multiple stakeholders and competing priorities across a distributed, multi-timezone organisation

• Excellent written and verbal English communication skills

Benefits & Perks : Global Impact, Personal Relevance

• Annual paid time off and generous paid leave scheme including: parental (22-weeks paid leave), grandparent, bereavement, and care leave

• Hybrid working including flexible working arrangements, working from home furniture and ergonomic support, and up to 20 days per year working from abroad (home country)

• A beautiful sustainable HQ Campus in Amsterdam , that offers on-site meals, coffee, and snacks, multi-faith and breastfeeding rooms at the office

• Commuting allowance and bike reimbursement scheme

• Discounts & Wallet credits to spend on our products, upgrade to Booking.com Genius Level 3, and friends & family Booking.com discount vouchers

• Free access to online learning platforms, development and mentorship programs

• Global Employee Assistance Program, free Headspace membership

DEI : Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Booking.com

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) have been a core part of our company culture since day one. This ongoing journey starts with our very own employees, who represent over 140 nationalities and a wide range of ethnic and social backgrounds, genders and sexual orientations. Take it from our Chief People Officer, Paulo Pisano: “At Booking.com, the diversity of our people doesn’t just create a unique workplace, it also creates a better and more inclusive travel experience for everyone.”

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable adjustments to participate in the interview process. Please contact us to request adjustments.

Application Process

• The interview process will entail a  call with one of our Recruiters and a total of 4 interviews, all conducted via Zoom video conferencing.

• This role does not come with relocation assistance.

Booking.com is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. We strive to move well beyond traditional equal opportunity and work to create an environment that allows everyone to thrive.

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.