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 Engineerto 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.

• Serve as a primary consultant for multiple engineering squads, providing clarity on complex architectural trade-offs and ensuring technical consistency across the K4B ecosystem.

• Spearhead initiatives to improve the engineering lifecycle, from establishing sophisticated observability patterns and CI/CD matures to refining internal standards for code quality and distributed system design.

• Translate high-level business objectives into robust technical specifications, effectively communicating architectural risks and opportunities to executive leadership.

Please apply if you have:

• A minimum of 9 years of professional software development experience, with a significant portion dedicated to the large-scale distributed systems.

• Expert-level mastery of the Java ecosystem and Spring Framework (Boot, Security).

• Expertise in designing for high-throughput data environments using PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Redis.

• Good command of the English language

• Understanding of airline distribution standards, specifically NDC (New Distribution Capability) and legacy GDS (Amadeus, Sabre) protocols.

• Knowledge of B2B integration patterns including SAML, OAuth2, OIDC, and SCIM for automated user lifecycle management via Okta, Workday, or Azure AD.

• Previous experience with AI/LLM would be a plus.

Benefits and Perks

• Work from (almost) anywhere for up to 20 days per year

• Focus on mental health and well-being:

  • Company-paid therapy sessions through SpringHealth

  • Company-paid subscription to HeadSpace

  • Company-wide week off a year - the whole team fully recharges (and returns without a pile-up of work!)

• No meeting Fridays

• Paid parental leave

• Generous paid vacation + time off for your birthday

• Paid volunteer time

• Focus on your career growth:

  • Development Dollars

  • Leadership development

  • Access to thousands of on-demand e-learnings

• Travel Discounts

• Employee Resource Groups

• 6 weeks paid vacation

• Free lunch 2 days per week

• Pension plan contributions

• Public transportation subsidies

• Bike leasing program

• Monthly social events, Thursday happy hours, sports teams

• An awesome office in Friedrichshain, Berlin

Inclusion

At KAYAK, we want everyone to have the space to grow, share ideas and do great work. That’s why we’re focused on hiring the best talent from all walks of life and experiences, supporting them well and making sure no one feels like they have to fit a mold to belong here.

Need any adjustments for the interview, application or on the job? No problem - just give us a heads-up. We’ve got you.

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