Senior Backend Engineer - Lodging and Cars
Backend Engineer · Senior · Full Time · Remote
Opens Hopper's application page
Role
What you'll do.
Join Hopper's Lodging and Cars Supply team as a Senior Backend Engineer to scale a global hotel and cars ecosystem handling high-volume, real-time transactions. As a senior individual contributor, you'll navigate a complex microservices environment to deliver reliable booking fulfillment, integrate new lodging and cars partners into the core stack, and optimize system monitoring. This role is ideal for a self-directed engineer with strong Scala/JVM expertise who excels at exploring complex systems and executing end-to-end technical solutions in a high-growth travel fintech environment.
Responsibilities
- End-to-End Technical Integration: Execute comprehensive technical integrations with external lodging, cars, and GDS (Global Distribution System) partners while navigating complex communication protocols and distributed data schemas to expand Hopper's booking infrastructure.
- High-Performance Microservices Development: Write clean, performant code in Scala and other JVM languages to maintain, evolve, and uphold rigorous engineering standards for mission-critical lodging services handling high-volume transaction throughput.
- Production Issue Resolution: Explore and troubleshoot complex codebases to deep-dive into infrastructure issues and resolve production problems in a distributed system environment, ensuring minimal booking disruption and customer impact.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Product Managers and Operations teams to decompose business requirements into technical tasks, provide accurate delivery timeline estimates, and ensure alignment between technical implementation and product strategy.
- Full Lifecycle Feature Ownership: Take full ownership of the development lifecycle for new product features, from initial technical implementation and comprehensive testing to production deployment, monitoring, and optimization.
- System Resilience and Performance: Contribute to the design of highly resilient, low-latency services that ensure a seamless booking experience for customers under high load, with a focus on scalability and fault tolerance.
- Code Quality and System Optimization: Participate in thorough code reviews and identify opportunities to optimize scalability, performance, latency, and overall system health while maintaining high engineering standards across the team.
Qualifications
What we look for.
Technical
Scala or JVM Languages
Strong proficiency in Scala, Java, or Kotlin with demonstrated expertise in building scalable, high-throughput services that can handle millions of transactions and maintain performance under extreme load.
Microservices Architecture
Proven track record of owning technical implementation, testing, and deployment of features within microservices architectures, with deep understanding of service orchestration and inter-service communication patterns.
Distributed Systems
Practical experience with distributed systems and service communication methods including gRPC, Pub/Sub messaging patterns, REST APIs, and event-driven architectures in production environments.
System Exploration and Debugging
Ability to independently explore complex codebases, navigate unfamiliar systems, debug production issues effectively, and execute technical plans within existing infrastructure without extensive hand-holding.
Real-Time Transaction Processing
Experience building or maintaining systems that handle real-time transaction processing, high-volume booking systems, or similar mission-critical applications with strict performance requirements.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or Related Field
Formal education in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent professional experience demonstrating core computer science fundamentals and software engineering principles.
Experience
Backend Software Engineering
5+ years of professional backend software engineering experience with at least 2+ years at a senior level, demonstrating technical depth, architectural thinking, and the ability to lead technical initiatives independently.
Travel, Fintech, or E-Commerce
Professional experience or deep familiarity with travel technology platforms, fintech systems, booking engines, or high-volume e-commerce environments where system reliability and performance are critical success factors.
Production System Ownership
Demonstrated ownership of production systems from design through deployment and monitoring, with experience responding to incidents, optimizing performance, and scaling systems to handle growth.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
Track record of effectively collaborating with product managers, operations teams, and other engineering squads to translate business requirements into technical solutions in fast-paced environments.
Skills
Required
Scala
Expert-level proficiency in Scala for building scalable, high-performance backend services with functional programming principles and strong understanding of Scala's type system and concurrency models.
Java/Kotlin
Strong proficiency in Java or Kotlin as alternative JVM languages, with ability to write clean, maintainable code and leverage JVM ecosystem libraries and tools effectively.
Microservices Architecture
Deep understanding of microservices design patterns, service decomposition, distributed tracing, and strategies for managing complexity in large-scale distributed systems.
gRPC
Practical experience implementing and troubleshooting gRPC-based service-to-service communication, understanding protocol buffers, and managing high-performance RPC frameworks.
Pub/Sub Messaging
Experience designing and implementing event-driven architectures using Pub/Sub patterns for asynchronous communication between microservices and handling message delivery guarantees.
REST API Design
Proficiency in designing and implementing RESTful APIs, understanding HTTP semantics, error handling, versioning strategies, and best practices for API scalability and maintainability.
Distributed Systems
Strong conceptual and practical knowledge of distributed systems principles, including consistency models, consensus algorithms, fault tolerance, and handling network partitions.
Database Design and Optimization
Experience designing database schemas, query optimization, indexing strategies, and understanding trade-offs between different data storage solutions for high-performance applications.
System Debugging and Troubleshooting
Strong ability to debug complex systems, read stack traces, use profiling tools, and independently diagnose performance issues and production problems in distributed environments.
Preferred
Akka Framework
Nice to haveExperience with Akka toolkit for building concurrent and distributed systems in Scala/Java, particularly for handling actor-based concurrency and scaling patterns.
Kafka
Nice to haveFamiliarity with Apache Kafka for building event streaming platforms, understanding topics, partitions, consumer groups, and managing high-throughput data pipelines.
Kubernetes and Container Orchestration
Nice to haveExperience deploying and managing services using Kubernetes, Docker, and containerization technologies for modern cloud-native application deployment and scaling.
Cloud Platforms
Nice to haveWorking experience with major cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure) for infrastructure, networking, observability, and understanding cloud-native architectural patterns.
Observability and Monitoring
Nice to haveHands-on experience with monitoring tools like Datadog, Prometheus, ELK stack, or similar platforms for collecting metrics, logs, and traces to diagnose system health and performance.
SQL and NoSQL Databases
Nice to havePractical experience with both SQL databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and NoSQL solutions (MongoDB, DynamoDB, Cassandra) and understanding when to apply each technology.
Travel or Booking Systems
Nice to haveBackground working on travel booking platforms, hotel/airline integration systems, GDS connectivity, or similar domain-specific systems that handle complex real-time inventory.
API Versioning and Backward Compatibility
Nice to haveExperience managing API evolution, versioning strategies, and maintaining backward compatibility in systems serving multiple external partners and internal services.
Tech stack
Languages
Frameworks
Databases
Tools
Other
Compensation
Pay and benefits.
Base·USD 160,000 – 220,000
Equity·Stock options
Benefits
Pre-IPO Equity Packages
Competitive equity compensation as part of a well-funded, pre-IPO startup positioned for significant growth, providing upside potential aligned with company success.
Comprehensive Health Coverage
Hopper-sponsored Health Collective providing enrollment options for basic medical and dental insurance with flexible deductible choices to meet individual healthcare needs.
Life and Disability Insurance
Private insurance coverage supplementing social security for Accidental Death and Long-term Disability protection, including Excess and Gap insurance options for comprehensive coverage.
Pension Savings Allowance
Cash allowance provided in lieu of formal pension plan, giving employees flexibility to direct retirement savings contributions according to personal financial planning strategies.
Generous Parental Leave
Significantly above-industry-standard parental leave benefits reflecting Hopper's commitment to work-life balance and family support for all employees.
Unlimited Paid Time Off
Unlimited PTO policy enabling flexible time management and encouraging employees to take adequate rest while maintaining productivity and business continuity.
Flexible Work Arrangements
Flexdesk coworking All Access Pass combined with work-from-home stipend, supporting remote-first operations and providing flexibility to work from preferred locations.
Travel Stipend
Carrot Cash travel stipend enabling employees to experience travel benefits and explore Hopper's services firsthand, aligned with company mission.
Entrepreneurial Culture
Dynamic work environment encouraging innovation, calculated risk-taking, and pushing organizational limits as part of everyday business operations and team culture.
Open Leadership Communication
Direct access to management and company leadership with transparent communication channels enabling employees to engage with decision-making and strategic initiatives.
High-Impact Team Environment
Opportunity to work in small, dynamic teams where individual contributions directly drive company success and provide outsized impact relative to team size.
Full posting
Original listing.
About the Role
Join the Lodging and Cars Supply team at the heart of our lodging and cars business unit, where you will be instrumental in scaling a global hotel and cars ecosystem that handles high-volume, real-time transactions.
As a senior-level individual contributor, you will navigate a complex microservices environment to deliver reliable booking fulfillment, integrate new lodging and cars partners into our core stack, and optimize system monitoring. This role is designed for a self-directed engineer who excels at system exploration and immediate technical execution within an established, high-growth travel environment.
What would your day-to-day look like
Execute end-to-end technical integrations with external lodgings, cars and GDS partners while navigating complex communication protocols and distributed data schemas.
Write clean, performant code in Scala or other JVM languages to maintain, evolve, and uphold rigorous engineering standards for mission-critical lodging services.
Explore and troubleshoot existing complex codebases to deep-dive into infrastructure and resolve production issues in a distributed system environment.
Partner with Product Managers and Operations to decompose business requirements into technical tasks and estimate delivery timelines.
Take full ownership of the development lifecycle for new product features, from initial technical implementation and testing to production deployment.
Contribute to the design of highly resilient, low-latency services to ensure a seamless booking experience for customers under high load.
Participate in thorough code reviews and identify opportunities to optimize scalability, performance, and system health.
An ideal candidate has
Strong proficiency in Scala or other JVM languages, such as Java or Kotlin, with a focus on building scalable, high-throughput services.
A proven track record of owning the technical implementation, testing, and deployment of features within a microservices architecture.
Practical experience with distributed systems and service communication methods including gRPC, Pub/Sub, and REST.
The ability to onboard quickly and handle technical ambiguity by independently exploring and executing technical plans within existing infrastructure.
Excellent communication skills and a "bias for action" to effectively collaborate with cross-functional squads in a remote-first environment.
A professional curiosity for the travel tech industry and a commercial mindset focused on delivering reliable booking fulfillment.
Perks & benefits of working with us:
Well-funded and proven startup with large ambitions, competitive salary and the upsides of pre-IPO equity packages.
Hopper offers employees enrollment to a Hopper sponsored Health Collective that includes options for basic medical and dental insurances, as well as options for deductibles.
Hopper offers private insurance coverage to supplement social security payments attributed to Accidental Death and Long term disability, including Excess and Gap insurances.
In lieu of a formal pension plan, Hopper will provide a cash allowance to put towards pension savings.
Please ask us about our very generous parental leave, much above industry standards!.
Unlimited PTO.
Flexdesk coworking All Access Pass AND Work-from-home stipend.
Carrot Cash travel stipend.
Entrepreneurial culture where pushing limits and taking risks is everyday business.
Open communication with management and company leadership.
Small, dynamic teams = massive impact.
More about Hopper
At Hopper, we are on a mission to become the leading travel platform globally – powering Hopper’s mobile app, website and our B2B business, HTS (Hopper Technology Solutions). By leveraging massive amounts of data and advanced machine learning algorithms, Hopper combines its world-class travel agency offering with proprietary fintech products to bring transparency, flexibility and savings to travelers globally. We have developed several unique fintech solutions that address everything from pricing volatility to trip disruptions – helping people travel better and save more on their trips.
The Hopper platform serves hundreds of millions of travelers globally and continues to capture market share around the world. he Hopper app has been downloaded over 120 million times and has become largely popular among younger travelers – with 70% of its users being Gen Z and millennials.
While everyone knows us as the Gen Z and Millennial travel app, Hopper has evolved to become much more than that. In recent years, we’ve grown into a travel fintech provider, commerce platform, and global travel agency that powers some of the world’s largest brands.
Through HTS, our B2B division, the company supercharges its partners’ direct channels by integrating our fintech products on their sites or powering end-to-end travel portals. Today, our partners include leading travel brands like Capital One, Nubank, Air Canada, and many more.
Here are just a few stats that demonstrate the company’s recent growth:
Billions of dollars worth of travel and travel fintech are sold through Hopper and HTS’ channels every year.
Our fintech products – including Cancel for Any Reason and Flight Disruption Assistance – have exceptionally strong CSAT because the terms are always clear, and customers receive instant, no-questions-asked resolutions.
Almost 30% of our app customers purchase at least one fintech product when making a booking; and consumers are 1.6x more likely to repurchase if they add fintech to their booking vs if they booked just travel.
Given the success of its fintech products, Hopper launched a B2B initiative, HTS (Hopper Technology Solutions), which represents more than 75% of the business.
Through HTS, any travel provider (airlines, hotels, banks, travel agencies, etc.) can integrate and seamlessly distribute Hopper’s fintech or travel inventory on their direct channels. As its first HTS partnership, the company partnered with Capital One to co-develop Capital One Travel, a new travel portal designed specifically for cardholders. Other HTS partners include Air Canada, Uber, CommBank, Nubank, Flair Airlines and many more.
Hopper has been named the #1 most innovative company in travel by Fast Company Hopper has been downloaded over 120 million times and continues to have millions of new installs each month. Hopper is now the #3 largest online travel agencies in North America and 70% of our app customers are Gen-Z and millennials travelers.
Hopper has raised over $750 million USD of private capital and is backed by some of the largest institutional investors and banks in the world. HTS is primed to continue its growth as the leading travel ecommerce provider in a $1 trillion online shopping category. The Hopper app and website will also continue to be the preferred travel provider for Gen Z and Millennials.
Come take off with us!
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