Vice President Engineering & Data, Booking.com
Trips
Salary not provided
Senior and Expert level
Manchester
Leading travel accommodation and experiences marketplace
Be an early applicant
Leading travel accommodation and experiences marketplace
1001+ employees
FintechHospitalityB2BTravelMarketplace
Be an early applicant
Salary not provided
Senior and Expert level
Manchester
1001+ employees
FintechHospitalityB2BTravelMarketplace
Company mission
To shape the future of travel through cutting edge technology, to make it easier for everyone to enjoy amazing experiences wherever they go.
Role
Who you are
- Education: Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or Engineering (or equivalent practical experience) is required; a Master's or advanced degree is preferred
- Global Leadership at Scale: Extensive experience leading a large, multi-site, multi-geography technology, engineering & data function, preferably in a tech or platform-business
- Strategic & Organizational Change: Proven track record of driving significant technological and organizational change and transformation, including evolving operating models and resource allocation
- Executive Influence: Expert ability to partner with global executives, manage high-stakes strategic initiatives, and effectively influence stakeholders at all levels to drive business outcomes (innovation, customer metrics, and revenue growth)
- Change and Operational Management: Ability to go deep into technology and detail where needed without loosing the big picture to drive forward operational excellence and delivery. Experienced in driving and leading change successfully throughout large organisations. Comfortable working with ambiguity
- Results & Execution: Demonstrated ability to manage costs, meet critical deadlines, and drive multiple complex initiatives simultaneously in a complex, fast-paced, performance- and data-driven environment
- Technology Strategy: Demonstrable experience in setting and leading the end-to-end technology strategy across multiple business lines and product portfolios, particularly within a complex, matrixed organization
- Modern Engineering at Scale: Deep expertise in leading and inspiring large Engineering and Data organizations, with a focus on modern engineering practices, distributed domain-based architectures, and efficient scaling using cloud/elastic infrastructure
- Agile Delivery: Demonstrable experience leading Agile Engineering & Data functions at scale, with a clear focus on high-velocity delivery of working software
- Platform & Data Depth: Deep understanding of modern engineering and data platforms, including architecture, governance, scalability, reliability, and the business-critical data capabilities required for an enterprise. Demonstrable experience leading Data Engineering or modern data platform capabilities at scale, including data architecture, governance, reliability, and the enablement of analytics, experimentation, machine learning, and AI use cases
- Customer-Facing Experience: Solid, direct experience with digital customer-facing products in the web and mobile space
- GenAI Leadership: Experience in defining and leading the strategy for the learning, upskilling, and adoption of Generative AI capabilities across engineering and data teams
- Foundational Scaling: Proven ability to build the technical foundations (architecture, tooling, integration patterns, observability, governance, and lifecycle management) required to responsibly scale GenAI solutions across an enterprise
- Workflow Integration: Practical understanding of how to embed GenAI into core engineering and data workflows to improve developer productivity, knowledge access, support tooling, testing, and operational automation
- Responsible AI Partnership: Experience partnering with Product, Data, Security, and Legal leaders to identify high-value GenAI use cases while ensuring solutions adhere to company standards for security, privacy, compliance, reliability, and responsible AI
- Experience managing and being accountable for significant technology operating and capital expenditure (OpEx/CapEx) budgets, including driving financial discipline and making ROI-based investment trade-offs
- Direct experience in being ultimately accountable for the Service Reliability, Availability, Performance, and Scalability (RAPS) of mission-critical production services and data pipelines, specifically championing and embedding a strong Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) culture
- Experience establishing security by design and leading security/cyber risk mitigation efforts across a large-scale technology portfolio
- Experience with technology due diligence, post-acquisition integration, and scaling acquired teams and technology is preferable but not a must
What the job involves
- The Trips Business Unit (Trips) is central to realizing Booking.com's vision of the Connected Trip
- Trips is responsible for building world-class experiences across key travel categories—including Flights, Rental Cars, Rides, Attractions/Experiences, and Insurance—on a global scale
- Beyond leading these verticals, Trips ensures high-quality and consistent traveler experiences by adhering to Booking.com-wide data and technology standards
- The VP Engineering & Data for Trips will own and drive the technology, infrastructure, and data strategy that enables the sustained growth of Trips and a consistent experience across the wider Booking.com ecosystem
- This critical leadership role oversees a team of 600+ engineers across multiple vertical teams and locations (main locations: Manchester, London, Amsterdam, India), shaping multiple customer and partner propositions
- The VP will continue leading our journey of platform transformation - focused on modernization and standardization within Trips and the core Booking platforms - to build highly reliable, scalable, and flexible systems that support the long-term Connected Trip vision
- This includes leading engineering & data teams and their performance, integrating modern engineering and data practices, including Generative AI
- The organizational setup operates in a matrix structure with distributed domain-based/vertical teams as well as leveraging horizontal services
- The VP is accountable for aligning the Trips Technology & Data strategy with the overall Technology & Data strategy (led by the Booking.com CTO) and is a key member of the VP Tech Council (Tech Circle) that governs standard solutions and best practices globally for Booking.com
- Modernize and standardize the Trips technology and data estate where appropriate
- Build trusted data foundations that enable personalization, analytics, and AI
- Improve delivery velocity, operational resilience, and drive responsible innovation
- Effectively and responsibly integrate AI tooling and usage into engineering and data processes and ways of working. Where appropriate, drive the shift from traditional heuristics to AI-first product experiences
- Reports to: SVP, Trips (with a dotted line to the CTO)
- Direct reports: Engineering & Data Directors / leads in each Trips vertical, Site Leader Trips in Bangalore, Director Architecture Trips (7)
- Key Peer relationships: VPs in Central Technology, Accomodations, Marketplace, Fintech, Marketing, Product leaders in Trips
- Strategy & Planning: Own and deliver the Trips Engineering and Data strategy, ensuring alignment with Central Technology and business objectives to support long-term revenue and profit growth. This role includes ownership of the Trips Data (Engineering) strategy and shared data foundations required to support product development, operational decision-making, analytics, machine learning, and AI-enabled use cases across Trips
- Platform Leadership: Define and oversee the platform architecture to ensure the delivery of scalable, secure, and reliable platforms that underpin all product, operational, analytical, and AI-driven business priorities
- Innovation & Standards: Drive technology innovation and the adoption of modern engineering and data craft standards across the unit. Accelerate responsible adoption of Generative AI across engineering and data workflows to improve developer productivity, operational efficiency, and customer or partner value where relevant
- System Integrity: Ensure stability and financial efficiency of all core technical systems, establishing appropriate reporting and alerting mechanisms for rapid deficiency identification and resolution
- Leadership: Direct reports include a mix of Senior Directors and Directors in Engineering and Data who support across Trips verticals
- Talent Leadership: Lead and manage a large, multi-site, multi-geography team of circa 650 colleagues (including Manchester, London, Bangalore and Amsterdam hubs, plus outsourced staff and contractors), with additional dotted-line management of a circa 130-person team in the Booking Holdings India Centre of Excellence
- Organizational Effectiveness: Ensure an efficient and effective organizational setup through regular reviews, appropriate evolution, and change management. Collaborate with Trips vertical Managing Directors and Product leaders to optimize resource allocation and overall team effectiveness
- Culture & Talent Development: Create an exciting, dynamic, and forward-thinking working environment that engages, retains, and nurtures talent, alongside driving development programs for the engineering & data community within the business unit
- Own and drive the global talent acquisition strategy for the Trips Engineering and Data organization to ensure the team can scale effectively to meet business growth, focusing on attracting and hiring diverse, world-class technical talent
- Strategic Influence: Actively participate in the Trips Leadership Team, contributing to broader strategic decision-making beyond the technical agenda. Act as a key member of the Booking.com Tech and Data Councils (Tech Circle), influencing and shaping engineering & data policy and practice globally. Partner closely with Product leadership to align technology and data investment, delivery priorities, and organizational design to the Trips roadmap and business goals
- Compliance & Security: Own delivery accountability for all Booking.com and Trips security, cyber, and compliance policies and standards. Ensure technology solutions are compliant with all legal, regulatory, and company-driven technical guidelines
- Statutory Duties: Where appropriate, take on statutory directorship responsibilities within Trips legal entities
- Cross-Functional Alignment: Ensure clear direction and alignment for Trips services and systems during Planning and day-to-day processes across all cross-functional work with other business units within the Booking.com organization
- Manage the Technology & Data Budget and P&L: Own, manage, and be accountable for the Trips Engineering & Data operating and capital expenditure budget (OpEx/CapEx), driving financial discipline and making investment trade-offs to maximize ROI on technology spend
- Accountability for Service Reliability: Be ultimately accountable for the reliability, availability, performance, and scalability (RAPS) of all production services and data pipelines within the Trips portfolio, championing a strong Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) culture. For data this includes data quality, pipeline reliability, SLAs for critical data assets and products, observability and incident management across data services
Our take
Booking.com has established itself as a leading digital travel company. The company reaps the benefits of its status in the market and is currently in a stronger position than its up-and-coming competitors such as Expedia, Trivago and Trip.com. Airbnb represents the sharing economy and acts as a disruptive force in this market but still has ways to go to compete with Booking.com.
In recent years, there has been considerable growth in the number of travellers wishing to travel more sustainably. And Booking.com is well positioned to attract these consumers, having introduced a Travel Sustainable badge on their platform which over 100,000 properties have achieved for their sustainability efforts.
The company was originally founded with a core focus on hotels, and the platform now offers more than 31M accommodation listings. It has also expanded into different services, including flights, car rentals, and attractions.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Company benefits
- Health insurance
- Free access to Headspace for you and your loved ones
- Global Employee Assistance Program
- Meditation and Breastfeeding rooms at the office
- Booking Cares - 2 days per year to volunteer and learn
- Life insurance
- Disability insurance
- Pension plan
- Annual paid time off
- Parental leave - 22 weeks
- Grandparent leave - 10 days
- Care leave - 10 days
- Bereavement leave - up to 4 weeks
- Anniversary leave
- Working from Home Furniture and Ergonomic Support
- Working from Abroad - up to 20 days per year
- Discounts & Wallet credits to spend on our products
- Upgrade to Booking.com Genius Level 3
- Friends & Family Booking.com discount vouchers
- Free access to online learning platforms
- Development and mentorship programs to support career growth
- Access to trainings and workshops
- Team development opportunities
- Local discount programs
- Game rooms in offices
- On-site meals, coffee and snacks including vegan options
Company HQ
Nieuwmarkt en Lastage, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Leadership
Glenn Fogel
(CEO)Previously Vice President at Morgan Stanley. They joined Booking Holdings in 2000 and have held several high profile and executive positions since. They are currently the President and CEO
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