Principal UX Designer - AI Incubation Lab

Expedia Group brands power global travel for everyone, everywhere. We design cutting‑edge tech to make travel smoother and more memorable, and we create groundbreaking solutions for our partners. Our diverse, vibrant, and welcoming community is essential in driving our success. Why Join Us? To shape the future of travel, people must come first. Guided by our Values and Leadership Agreements, we foster an open culture where everyone belongs, differences are celebrated, and we know that when one of us wins, we all win. We provide a full benefits package, including exciting travel perks, generous time‑off, parental leave, a flexible work model (with some pretty cool offices), and career development resources, all to fuel our employees' passion for travel and ensure a rewarding career journey. We’re building a more open world. Join us. To fuel each employee’s passion for travel, we offer a wellness & travel reimbursement, travel discounts, and an International Airlines Travel Agent (IATAN) membership. View our full list of benefits. Principal UX 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. 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 UX 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 end‑to‑end vision, strategy, and UX design execution for AI‑driven incubation projects that inform the future of travel across Expedia Group brands. Explore, define, and prototype novel AI‑powered product experiences, creating experiential artifacts that bring ambiguous opportunities to life for travelers, partners, and internal teams. Design and iterate conceptual, visual, and interaction patterns that evolve the Expedia brand experience in response to emerging AI capabilities and future customer needs. Produce tangible prototypes and experiments, including “vibe‑coded” or coded artifacts, to evaluate ideas with users and stakeholders and to inform strategic decisions. Collaborate closely with a small cross‑functional incubation team to transform early concepts into higher‑fidelity experiences and potential customer‑facing experiments, safely integrating AI/ML‑enabled solutions that improve outcomes. Synthesize and communicate key insights, learnings, and design directions through compelling storytelling to senior leaders and peers, transferring knowledge into current product teams and fostering a fast‑paced culture of AI‑first innovation. Minimum Qualifications 12+ years of experience in product or UX design, including substantial experience shipping high‑quality digital products or services at scale. Bachelor’s degree or higher in a related field (Design, Human‑Computer Interaction, User Experience or similar), or equivalent relevant experience. Relevant academic qualifications that help grow the team’s knowledge or expertise are welcomed but not required. Proven ability to take ambiguous, technically complex opportunities and translate them into clear, inspiring, and testable AI‑powered product experiences and prototypes. Demonstrated expertise in interaction, visual, and systems‑level experience design, including creating experiential artifacts (prototypes, coded demos, or similar) that guide strategic product decisions. Strong communication and storytelling skills with a track record of influencing cross‑functional stakeholders and leadership in a highly collaborative environment. Familiarity with AI‑driven systems, tools, or workflows and applying AI/ML concepts to real‑world products, including integrating AI capabilities into end‑to‑end customer journeys. Preferred Qualifications Experience leading incubation, exploratory, or zero‑to‑one design initiatives that shaped long‑term product or portfolio strategy in a complex ecosystem. Background designing and evaluating AI‑assisted or AI‑first user experiences, including responsible application of AI/ML capabilities to improve decision making, automation, or personalization. Demonstrated ability to safely integrate and operate AI/ML‑enabled solutions that improve customer and business outcomes, including partnering with product and engineering to define guardrails and evaluation criteria. Proven success crafting and evolving design languages, pattern libraries, or interaction models to accommodate emerging AI‑driven behaviors across multiple products or brands. Depth in creating and running higher‑fidelity prototypes and experiments (including data‑ or behavior‑informed prototypes) to validate AI‑centric concepts, and demonstrated experience taking products from concept to scaled adoption. The total cash range for this position in New York is $242,000.00 to $338,500.00. Employees in this role have the potential to increase their pay up to $387,000.00, which is the top of the range, based on ongoing, demonstrated, and sustained performance in the role. The total cash range for this position in Seattle is $224,000.00 to $313,500.00. Employees in this role have the potential to increase their pay up to $358,500.00, which is the top of the range, based on ongoing, demonstrated, and sustained performance in the role. Starting pay for this role will vary based on multiple factors, including location, available budget, and an individual’s knowledge, skills, and experience. Pay ranges may be modified in the future. Accommodation requests If you need assistance with any part of the application or recruiting process due to a disability, or other physical or mental health conditions, please reach out to our Recruiting Accommodations Team through the Accommodation Request. Expedia is committed to creating an inclusive work environment with a diverse workforce. 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, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. This employer participates in E‑Verify. The employer will provide the Social Security Administration (SSA) and, if necessary, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with information from each new employee's I‑9 to confirm work authorization. #J-18808-Ljbffr Expedia, Inc.