BackEnd Staff Software Development Engineer (Level 4)

The Backend Engineering team builds high-scale, fault-tolerant distributed systems powering a global travel platform. The Staff Backend Engineer will own the design and reliability of a critical service or domain end-to-end, from architecture through production. Responsibilities include designing scalable distributed systems, leading complex features, driving system design and best practices, and owning scalability and performance. The role requires proactive identification of gaps, making independent architectural decisions, collaborating with adjacent teams, and mentoring engineers.

Design, build, and own scalable distributed systems and microservices within your domain

Lead development of complex features and technical initiatives end-to-end

Drive system design, API design, and engineering best practices

Own scalability, performance, reliability, and fault tolerance

Optimize high-throughput, low-latency systems

Proactively identify gaps, risks, or improvement opportunities

Make independent architectural and technical trade-off decisions

Collaborate with adjacent teams and raise engineering standards

Partner with product and business stakeholders

Stay hands-on with coding and system design

Mentor engineers on your team

Handle production issues, drive RCA, and lead follow-through improvements

Strong experience building and owning distributed systems at scale

Expertise in Java, Kotlin, Scala, or Go

Strong understanding of microservices architecture, REST APIs & system design, SQL/NoSQL databases, and performance, scalability, and concurrency

Strong coding and problem-solving ability

Track record of taking ownership beyond assigned tasks

Comfort making decisions under ambiguity and owning consequences

Experience communicating trade-offs to engineers and non-technical stakeholders

Demonstrated impact mentoring or growing engineers

Review Hiring Process Guidelines before interview