Staff Engineer (Java)
ABOUT KAYAK
KAYAK, part of Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG), is a leading travel search engine. With billions of queries across our platforms, we help people find their perfect flight, stay, rental car and vacation package. We’re also transforming business travel with a new corporate travel solution, KAYAK for Business.
As an employee of KAYAK, you will be part of a travel company that operates a portfolio of global metasearch brands including momondo, Cheapflights and HotelsCombined, among others. From start-up to industry leader, innovation is in our DNA and every employee has an opportunity to make their mark. Our focus is on building the best travel search engine to make it easier for everyone to experience the world.
KAYAK is seeking a Staff Engineer to serve as a principal technical authority within our backend engineering organization. In this capacity, you will provide the technical vision and architectural governance required to sustain KAYAK’s industry-leading search and booking ecosystem. You will be responsible for the integrity of a high-concurrency platform that facilitates integrations with over 200 global travel partners, 500,000 hotel properties, and 550 airlines.
As a Software Architect, your remit extends beyond individual feature delivery. You will act as a force multiplier, identifying cross-cutting technical challenges, mentoring senior engineering talent, and ensuring that our enterprise-grade solutions for KAYAK for Business (K4B) remain resilient, scalable, and strategically aligned with our global expansion goals.
Location: Berlin, Germany (Hybrid: 3 days/week in-office)
IN THIS ROLE, YOU WILL:
- Ensure the search and booking logic maintains optimal performance under the rigorous demands of global enterprise clientele.
- Lead the design of high-performance, fault-tolerant integration frameworks for third-party APIs (NDC, GDS, and proprietary provider protocols), prioritizing low-latency execution and high availability.
- Serv...