About Booking.com
Established in 1996 in Amsterdam, Booking.com has grown from a small Dutch start‑up to one of the largest e‑commerce companies in the world. Booking.com is the largest business within Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG) and accounts for the vast majority of Booking Holdings’ total revenue. Booking Holdings is a leading Fortune 500 e‑commerce conglomerate with a market cap of roughly $166 billion (2025). Booking.com currently employs approximately 13,000 employees in 140 offices in 70 countries worldwide. With a mission to make it easier for everyone to experience the world, Booking.com invests in digital technology that helps take the friction out of travel. Booking.com connects travelers with the world’s largest selection of incredible places to stay, including everything from apartments, vacation homes, and family‑run B&Bs to 5‑star luxury resorts and even tree houses. The Booking.com website and mobile apps are available in over 44 languages, offer more than 28 M total reported listings, and cover over 174 000 destinations in 229 countries worldwide. In addition to accommodations, customers can book flights, curated attractions, experiences, and rental cars in thousands of destinations. Via the customer experience team, customers can reach Booking.com 24/7 for assistance in over 44 languages, any time of the day or night.
Profile VP Engineering & Data
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 (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.
Key Priorities For The Coming Years
* 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.
Key Relationships
* 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, Accommodations, Marketplace, Fintech, Marketing, Product leaders in Trips
Responsibilities
Technology Strategy & Architecture
* 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.
* Own 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.
* Drive technology innovation and adopt 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.
* Ensure stability and financial efficiency of all core technical systems, establishing appropriate reporting and alerting mechanisms for rapid deficiency identification and resolution.
Leadership, Team & Organization
* Lead a mix of Senior Directors and Directors in Engineering and Data who support across Trips verticals.
* Lead and manage a large, multi‑site, multi‑geography team of circa 650 colleagues (Manchester, London, Bangalore, Amsterdam hubs, plus outsourced staff and contractors) and a dotted‑line team of circa 130 persons in the Booking Holdings India Centre of Excellence.
* 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.
* Create an exciting, dynamic, and forward‑thinking working environment that engages, retains, and nurtures talent, and drive 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 scales effectively to meet business growth, focusing on attracting and hiring diverse, world‑class technical talent.
Governance & Strategic Alignment
* Actively participate in the Trips Leadership Team and contribute to broader strategic decision‑making beyond the technical agenda. Act as a key member of the Booking.com Tech and Data Councils (Tech Circle) and influence engineering & data policy and practice globally.
* 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.
* Take on statutory directorship responsibilities within Trips legal entities where appropriate.
* 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.
Financial, Budget & Service Ownership (P&L)
* Manage the Technology & Data budget and P&L, owning, managing, and being accountable for the Trips Engineering & Data operating and capital expenditure budget (OpEx/CapEx). Drive financial discipline and make investment trade‑offs to maximize ROI on technology spend.
* 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, ensure data quality, pipeline reliability, SLAs for critical data assets and products, observability and incident management across data services.
Ideal Experience And Skills
Leadership, Scale, and Strategic Acumen
* Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or Engineering (or equivalent practical experience) is required; a Master’s or advanced degree is preferred.
* Extensive experience leading a large, multi‑site, multi‑geography technology, engineering & data function, preferably in a tech or platform‑business.
* Proven track record of driving significant technological and organizational change and transformation, including evolving operating models and resource allocation.
* 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).
* Ability to go deep into technology and detail where needed without losing the big picture to drive forward operational excellence and delivery. Experienced in leading change throughout large organisations and comfortable working with ambiguity.
* Demonstrated ability to manage costs, meet critical deadlines, and drive multiple complex initiatives simultaneously in a fast‑paced, performance‑driven environment.
Technical & Platform Expertise
* Demonstrable experience setting and leading end‑to‑end technology strategy across multiple business lines and product portfolios within a complex, matrixed organization.
* Deep expertise in leading and inspiring large Engineering and Data organizations, focusing on modern engineering practices, distributed domain‑based architectures, and efficient scaling using cloud/elastic infrastructure.
* Demonstrable experience leading Agile Engineering & Data functions at scale with a focus on high‑velocity delivery of working software.
* Deep understanding of modern engineering and data platforms, including architecture, governance, scalability, reliability, and the business‑critical data capabilities required for an enterprise.
* Solid, direct experience with digital customer‑facing products in the web and mobile space.
Generative AI Strategy & Implementation (Preferable)
* Experience defining and leading the strategy for the learning, upskilling, and adoption of Generative AI capabilities across engineering and data teams.
* 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.
* Practical understanding of embedding GenAI into core engineering and data workflows to improve developer productivity, knowledge access, support tooling, testing, and operational automation.
* 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.
Governance, Financial, Budget & Service Ownership
* Experience managing significant technology operating and capital expenditure (OpEx/CapEx) budgets, driving financial discipline, and making ROI‑based investment trade‑offs.
* Direct experience being ultimately accountable for the Service Reliability, Availability, Performance, and Scalability (RAPS) of mission‑critical production services and data pipelines, 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.
* Preferable experience with technology due diligence, post‑acquisition integration, and scaling acquired teams and technology.
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