Matt Newberry – Software Development Engineer III

Tell us about your current team

I work in the Runtime Compute team. We’re responsible for creating and maintaining a platform capable of running over 6,000 of the applications and services that help make up Expedia Group. The platform has a tonne of features to improve the developer experience, such as out-of-the-box observability, secrets management and workload authentication and authorization to name just a few.

Tell us about your current role

As a Software Development Engineer, I’m expected to implement new features and bug fixes to a high standard but also look ahead at the technical direction of our products. This means I get to be involved in architectural decisions that affect the entire organization! Day to day, I spend most of my time writing microservices in Go and configuring Kubernetes resources via Helm charts to provide new or extend existing capabilities of our platform. Our team follows the Scrum framework, so my work is typically split by sprints. We’re given time at the end of each sprint to reflect what went well or what didn’t go so well.

Tell us about your career journey at Expedia Group

Following my internship in the Cloud Automation and Platform team, I returned to university to finish my degree in Computer Science. I had been extended an offer for a graduate role and so was able to focus on my studies with the peace of mind that a job was waiting for me at the end of it.

Then 2020 happened. In March 2020 the world began to shut down and travel ground to a halt. My graduate role was still honoured, but I ultimately found myself starting a job as a Software Developer for a music company. Thankfully, travel returned with ferocity and the following year I applied to re-join Expedia Group.

My experience working at another company gave me valuable experience, but it really made me appreciate the culture of technological innovation Expedia Group has, particularly in the platform space.

What advice would you share with an intern/graduate starting at EG?

Apprentices, interns and graduates starting at Expedia Group have a fantastic opportunity ahead of them, and it’s important to lean into it. Expedia Group has an amazing and diverse culture, and by getting involved with the social events and volunteering projects we have, they’ll be able to fully experience it. Besides that, “Don’t be afraid to ask questions” and “Be inquisitive”.