An Engineering Manager at Expedia Group plays a critical role in shaping the future of travel technology. You are not just managing developers; you are leading teams that build high-performance, scalable services that power global brands like Expedia, Hotels.com, and Vrbo. Your work directly impacts millions of travelers worldwide, ensuring that search, booking, payment, and loyalty systems run seamlessly at massive scale.

At Expedia Group, the Engineering Manager role sits at the intersection of technical leadership, people management, and product strategy. You will lead cross-functional teams of software engineers, collaborating closely with product managers, UX designers, and data scientists. Whether your team is optimizing microservices in AWS, enhancing search relevancy, or building modern user interfaces, your goal is to foster a high-performing engineering culture that delivers business value rapidly and reliably.

The position requires a unique blend of technical depth and leadership maturity. You must be comfortable guiding architectural decisions and system design discussions while simultaneously mentoring engineers, managing career progression, and driving operational excellence. It is an inspiring challenge for leaders who thrive in dynamic, cloud-first environments and want to solve complex, real-world problems in the travel space.

To help you prepare, we have categorized common questions asked during the Expedia Group hiring process. These questions are compiled from real candidate experiences and reflect the core competencies evaluated for the Engineering Manager role. Rather than memorizing answers, use these examples to understand the underlying themes and patterns your interviewers will explore.

Behavioral & Leadership

These questions assess your ability to manage engineering talent, resolve conflicts, and foster a healthy, collaborative team environment.

• Describe a time when you had to manage a low-performing engineer. What steps did you take, and what was the outcome?
• How do you handle disagreements between your senior engineers regarding architectural decisions?

To succeed in the Expedia Group selection process, you must approach your preparation systematically. The interview loop is designed to test both your technical foundation and your leadership philosophy. You should be ready to demonstrate how your technical decisions align with business metrics and traveler satisfaction.

People Management & Leadership – Expedia Group values leaders who build inclusive, high-performing teams. Expect to explain your framework for mentoring engineers, conducting performance reviews, and managing team dynamics. Be prepared to show how you foster psychological safety while maintaining high standards of accountability.

Technical Breadth & System Design – While you may not write code daily, you must demonstrate strong architectural intuition. You need to show that you can guide your team through complex technical choices, understand cloud infrastructure patterns, and design systems that are scalable, reliable, and secure.

Product & Business Acumen – As an Engineering Manager, you are a business partner. You must prove that you can translate customer needs into technical requirements. Interviewers will look for your ability to measure the business impact of technical initiatives using data and metrics.

Cultural Alignment & Communication – Expedia Group operates in a highly collaborative, global environment. You must communicate clearly, structure your thoughts logically, and show alignment with company values such as traveler-centricity and continuous learning.

The interview process for an Engineering Manager at Expedia Group is thorough but collaborative, designed to feel more like a peer-to-peer discussion than an interrogation. Candidates often describe the conversations as casual and engaging, with interviewers dedicated to sharing insights about the company culture and the specific team. However, the casual tone should not lead you to underestimate the rigor of the evaluation.

The journey begins with an initial recruiter screening to align on your background, expectations, and role fit. Following this, the process typically splits into a technical evaluation and a series of behavioral loops. A unique aspect of the Expedia Group process is the technical presentation round, which often involves a take-home assignment where you build a simple application using their product concepts and pitch it to the panel.

The onsite loop generally consists of three to four rounds. You will meet with peer engineering managers, your prospective line manager, and senior directors. These rounds focus heavily on behavioral scenarios, system design, and your overall leadership philosophy.

The timeline above outlines the typical progression from the initial contact to the final decision. Candidates should use this timeline to pace their preparation, ensuring they allocate sufficient time for both the take-home technical challenge and behavioral storytelling. The entire process generally spans three to five weeks, depending on candidate availability and team scheduling.

To excel in the Expedia Group interview loop, you must understand exactly what is evaluated in each core area. Your interviewers will look for concrete examples, structured thinking, and a balanced approach to technology and leadership.

Technical Execution & Product Pitch

This area evaluates your ability to build, analyze, and present a technical solution. Typically conducted as a presentation based on a take-home assignment, you will be asked to create a simple application leveraging Expedia Group product concepts and pitch it to a panel of engineers and managers.

Be ready to go over:

• API Integration & Prototyping – How you consume services, structure data, and build a functional prototype under time constraints.
• Product Pitching – Your ability to explain the business value, user experience, and technical trade-offs of your prototype.
• Code Craftsmanship – How you organize your project, write clean code, and document your architectural decisions.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Multi-region deployment strategies, client-side performance optimization, and integration of AI-driven personalization features.

Example scenarios:

• "Present a prototype of a travel-itinerary planning app, explaining your choice of tech stack and how you would scale the backend."
• "Walk us through how you designed the API contracts for your take-home app to ensure future extensibility."

People Leadership & Team Development

This area focuses on your ability to build, scale, and nurture engineering teams. Expedia Group looks for managers who can inspire developers, resolve interpersonal conflicts, and build a culture of continuous improvement.

Be ready to go over:

• Performance Management – Your approach to coaching high-performers and addressing underperformance constructively.
• Hiring & Team Scaling – How you source talent, conduct interviews, and onboard new engineers effectively.
• Conflict Resolution – Strategies for handling disagreements within the team or with external stakeholders.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Managing globally distributed teams across different time zones, and building career frameworks for specialized engineering roles.

Example scenarios:

• "Tell me about a time you had to deliver constructive feedback to a senior engineer who was resistant to change."
• "How do you ensure your team members stay motivated and aligned with the company's long-term vision?"

System Design & Architecture

As an Engineering Manager, you must ensure your team builds robust, scalable systems. This round tests your system design capabilities, architectural intuition, and operational awareness.

Be ready to go over:

• Scalability & High Availability – Designing systems that handle high traffic volume and fail gracefully.
• Data Modeling & Storage – Choosing the right databases (SQL vs. NoSQL) and caching strategies for complex transactional data.
• Microservices & Integration – Designing decoupled services, event-driven architectures, and robust API gateways.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Global data replication, consistency models in distributed systems, and cost optimization strategies in cloud environments.

Example scenarios:

• "Design a real-time notification system that alerts travelers about flight delays and gate changes."
• "How would you design a rate-limiting service to protect downstream booking APIs from malicious traffic?"