Michael Leidinger serves as Hilton’s SVP & Chief Information Officer where he is responsible for the Global Technology Estate, including software engineering, product management, enterprise architecture, customer and distribution platforms, data engineering, network and system engineering, information security, development operations, corporate systems and hotel and customer support.

As Hilton’s SVP & Chief Information Officer, Michael has led several pivotal technology initiatives that continue to have lasting impacts on the Hilton business. He and his team launched the only major customized hospitality reservations system that runs at scale in the cloud and currently supports 500M transactions per day, representing a 100% increase from a legacy system. Additionally, Michael oversaw the transition to One Hero Web, a cloud-based, platform as a service (PaaS) that supports significant customer traffic growth on Hilton.com. He can also be credited with spearheading the deployment of Hilton’s Property Engagement Platform (PEP), a flexible, scalable, cloud-based property management system (PMS) that replaced a 25-year-old technology.

Prior to joining Hilton in April 2010, Michael spent 15 years in various network and system engineering and operations roles with leading global technology companies such as AOL and PSINet. He also has extensive experience in nuclear power plant engineering and operations with the U.S. Navy and Department of Energy. He started his career as a nuclear engineering officer on attack submarines in the U.S. Navy.

Michael earned his BS with Distinction from the U.S. Naval Academy and his MSE from The Catholic University of America where he also served on the adjunct faculty in the School of Engineering. He lives with his wife, a high school math teacher, and their two daughters in Ashburn, Virginia.