Senior Software Engineer, KAYAK
$140-160k
3 days a week in office (Cambridge or Concord, MA )
Travel search engine
Be an early applicant
Travel search engine
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$140-160k
3 days a week in office (Cambridge or Concord, MA )
1001+ employees
Company mission
To help millions of travelers around the globe make confident travel decisions.
Role
Who you are
- 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a track record of delivering high-quality, production-grade backend systems in a fast-paced environment
- 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
- 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 HTML and CSS is a plus, especially when debugging or collaborating on full-stack solutions with partner teams
What the job involves
- KAYAK is seeking a Senior Java Software Engineer to join our Retention and CRM team! The Retention team powers the backend systems behind our Trips product and builds features that keep travelers coming back to KAYAK again and again
- The CRM team designs and scales the platform behind personalized email and push notifications delivered to millions of users. In this role, you'll collaborate with engineers, product managers, and marketing specialists to build meaningful, high-impact experiences across both areas
- 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
Our take
KAYAK is a travel agency and metasearch engine owned and operated by Booking Holdings. KAYAK processes over 6 billion queries across its platforms each year for travel information - as one of the world’s leading travel search engines, KAYAK searches other sites to show travellers the information they need to find the right flights, hotels, rental cars and vacation packages. It offers a variety of tools and features such as KAYAK trips, explore, and price forecast.
There’s been speculation over the years about online travel companies getting into the hotel business, and KAYAK is no exception. The company is expanding its hospitality offerings beyond its traditional hotel referral and booking services, but despite speculation through the 2020s, has stopped short of opening hotels under its own brand, preferring to partner with preexisting companies on their hotel tech.
Since being acquired by Booking Holdings, the global leader in online travel, in 2013, KAYAK has continued to expand and innovate, enhancing the travel experience for users all around the world. And now KAYAK manages a portfolio of metasearch brands including SWOODOO, checkfelix, momondo, Cheapflights, Mundi and HotelsCombined. With the aim to make it easier for everyone to experience the world - it now operates sites in more than 70 countries and territories.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
6% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Company benefits
- Work flexibly: Our global flexible work policy lets our teams decide if they head into one of our offices or work from anywhere else
- Team-wide time off: Most of our team disconnects at the same time each year to recharge and reconnect
- Global volunteer week: Take VTO (Volunteer Time Off) to support the organizations and charitable efforts you believe in
- Wellness: We take care of each other - providing opportunities and spaces to live that work-life balance
- Resource groups: Our five ERGs are employee-led groups for underrepresented communities and their allies
- Career growth: We provide opportunities for our team to develop their skills – or learn new ones – on their own terms
Company HQ
East Side of Stamford, Stamford, CT
Leadership
Steve Hafner
(Co-Founder & CEO)Previously Board Member of Trulia, Blade and SeatGeek and currently an Executive at OpenTable.
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