Principal, Product Designer - AI Incubation Lab

At Expedia Group, we help travelers explore the world, one journey at a time. As a global travel company powered by passionate people, trusted partnerships, and leading technology, we connect travelers, partners, and advertisers through our consumer brands, B2B network, and travel advertising business.

Here, you’ll do meaningful work that helps millions of people discover, book, and experience travel with more ease, confidence, and joy. Our five Behaviors-Traveler First, Think Big, Operate with Excellence, Ownership Mindset, and Succeed Together-help foster a supportive environment where people can grow their careers and have the flexibility, benefits, and support to do their best work. Join us and build for travelers everywhere.

Principal, Product Designer - AI Incubation Lab

Locations:  London, New York, Seattle, Austin, San Jose / San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Montreal, with other EG Locations up for discussion.

As a part of a small incubation team, lead exploration work on the future of travel powered by AI.

Expedia Group builds end-to-end experiences that millions of travelers, partners, and employees rely on every day. Within the Design team, we’re reimagining how people discover and book trips across Hotels.com, Vrbo, and Brand Expedia. We’re looking for a Principal Product Designer for incubation, helping explore the possibilities that AI opens in the space of travel and transfer that knowledge into current products.

In this position, you’ll be a part of a small prototype-oriented team that helps explore different futures and initiatives to inform Expedia’s key strategies. You will work autonomously and will balance strategic thinking with the ability to produce tangible artifacts and conduct evaluations as well as share learnings.

In this role, you will:

• Lead the creation and evolution of an AI‑forward customer experience vision and strategy for the AI Incubation Lab, defining clear success metrics and connecting them to business outcomes at the organizational level.
• Develop, formalize, and teach best‑in‑class problem framing, experimentation, and synthesis practices that combine qualitative research, quantitative data, and AI‑driven insights to uncover high‑value opportunities.
• Architect foundational experience frameworks, interaction patterns, and enterprise‑grade design system components that support rapidly evolving AI‑driven products and proofs‑of‑concept across multiple domains.
• Champion simple, elegant, and trustworthy experiences for AI‑enabled workflows, driving a high design quality bar through critique, mentoring, and hands‑on collaboration with cross‑functional partners.
• Build and nurture an innovation‑oriented design culture within the Lab and partner teams, facilitating collaborative concept development, rapid prototyping, and clear communication that links vision, strategy, and execution.
• Safely integrate and operate AI/ML‑enabled solutions that improve customer and business outcomes, designing responsibly for automation, augmentation, transparency, and human oversight in AI‑driven experiences.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in Design, Human‑Computer Interaction, User Experience, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience applying advanced design methods to digital products and services.
• 10+ years of professional experience in experience design, interaction design, product design, or a closely related discipline, with visible impact at product, platform, or organizational levels.
• Demonstrated expertise in at least two core design skills (such as interaction design, visual design, service design, or systems thinking), strong capability in at least two others, and the ability to apply this breadth across multiple product domains.
• Proven track record defining and driving customer experience strategy, design frameworks, and success metrics for multi‑team or organization‑level initiatives, including collaboration with senior stakeholders.
• Hands‑on experience using data, customer research, and AI‑driven systems, tools, or workflows to inform design decisions, including applying AI/ML concepts to real‑world products.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience leading the design of complex AI‑enabled or data‑rich products from early‑stage concept through scaled adoption, including framing problem spaces, validating opportunities, and iterating based on learning.
• Demonstrated ability to architect and evol…