Staff Software Engineer, KAYAK
Meta AI
$160-180k
+ annual bonus and recurring RSU grants
3 days a week in office ( Concord, MA )
Travel search engine
Be an early applicant
Travel search engine
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$160-180k
+ annual bonus and recurring RSU grants
3 days a week in office ( Concord, MA )
1001+ employees
Company mission
To help millions of travelers around the globe make confident travel decisions.
Role
Who you are
- Experience building and maintaining production software
- Proficiency in Java or another relevant programming language
- Familiarity with APIs, data structures and software-design principles
- Experience testing software and investigating defects or production issues
- The ability to explain technical decisions clearly in writing and conversation
- The ability to take ownership of assigned work while asking for input or support when needed
- Experience contributing to projects from design through implementation, release and maintenance
- Equivalent practical experience is welcome in place of a specific degree or educational path
Desirable
- Experience with distributed systems, search, personalization or other high-volume consumer products
- Experience with AI, machine learning or large language model applications
- Experience with relational databases or other structured data stores
- Experience working on web products, mobile products or travel-related products
- Experience improving accessibility, reliability or usability
- Experience working with Java and Spring
- Experience with cloud services, CI/CD pipelines and automated testing frameworks
What the job involves
- We are looking for a strong Java Senior Software Engineers to implement new features and maintain KAYAK’s AI. You will be an essential part of a high powered team that keeps all of this running smoothly – helping millions of people find the best hotels and the best ways to fly from A to B every day!
- Design, implement and maintain reliable production software for KAYAK’s travel-search and trip-planning experiences
- Build and evolve APIs and services supporting AI-assisted search, conversational travel planning, itineraries and related user experiences
- Investigate technical problems, assess trade-offs and choose practical solutions that improve reliability, performance and maintainability
- Write automated tests and contribute to quality across unit, integration and end-to-end testing
- Participate in code reviews and technical discussions, providing constructive feedback focused on correctness, clarity and maintainability
- Work with engineers, product managers and designers to clarify requirements and deliver useful, accessible user experiences
- Contribute to features such as ASK AI, smart filters, AI-generated hotel review summaries, Explore and related search experiences
- Help make AI-assisted features dependable, transparent and useful to travelers
- Learn unfamiliar systems and share knowledge with teammates through documentation, pairing and technical discussions
- Monitor and improve production behavior through effective debugging, observability and root-cause analysis
- Contribute to the evolution of development tools, engineering processes and delivery practices
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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