Software Engineer

In this role you will

• Design and deliver scalable, high-quality backend services across both Retention and CRM — including systems that power the Trips product, user re-engagement features, and large-scale email and push notification pipelines.
• Develop and improve backend services handling bulk and transactional messaging at scale, ensuring reliability and performance across millions of sends.
• Build and maintain backend features that drive user retention — including Trips functionality, price alerts, and personalized engagement touchpoints that bring travelers back to KAYAK.
• Architect and maintain robust integrations with third-party APIs and marketing platforms, ensuring data integrity and scalability across the email and retention stack.
• Lead the design of complex features end-to-end — from technical scoping and architecture decisions through deployment, monitoring, and production support.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including product managers, marketing specialists, designers, and globally distributed engineers to translate business requirements into well-engineered solutions.
• Debug and optimize full-stack solutions, proactively identifying performance bottlenecks, data pipeline failures, and production issues — and driving them to resolution.
• Contribute to engineering excellence by upholding coding standards, PR review practices, and operational monitoring, including alerting and incident response for team-owned systems.
• Coach and mentor junior and mid-level engineers through code reviews, design discussions, and knowledge sharing, helping to raise the technical bar for the team.
• Explore and apply emerging technologies — including AI-assisted tooling and automation — to improve developer productivity, personalization, and platform capabilities.

Please apply if you have

• Strong, proven programming skills in Java, with the ability to independently design, implement, and own complex backend features end to end.
• Solid experience with APIs and SQL — including designing and consuming RESTful APIs and working with relational databases such as MySQL or similar systems.
• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a track record of delivering high-quality, production-grade backend systems in a fast-paced environment.
• Experience leading the design and delivery of complex technical solutions, including making architectural tradeoffs and owning features through deployment and ongoing operations.
• Experience collaborating cross-functionally with product managers, marketing partners, designers, and globally distributed engineering teams to ship impactful features.
• A collaborative mindset and openness to learning and sharing ideas, including a willingness to mentor others through code reviews and knowledge sharing.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities and adapt to changing needs without requiring close direction, balancing sprint commitments with longer-term technical work.
• Education in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience and transferable skills.
• Experience with JavaScript, React, HTML, and CSS is a plus, especially when debugging or collaborating on full-stack solutions with partner teams.