Hopper

Staff Backend Software Engineer

Hopper3 days ago
Location

Ireland - Remote

Workplace

Remote

Type

Full Time

Salary

USD 170,000 – 220,000

Level

Staff

Role

Backend Engineer

Posted

Jun 30, 2026

Full TimeRemoteStaff

The role

Summary

Staff Backend Software Engineer at Hopper Technology Solutions, responsible for architecting and shipping scalable travel commerce platform features that power 410M+ cardholders globally. This role leverages AI-assisted development workflows and distributed systems expertise in Scala to drive feature velocity while maintaining system reliability across the multi-tenant travel booking infrastructure serving major banking and airline partners.

What you'll do

Identify and execute codebase improvements for AI-assisted development: Analyze and optimize backend architecture to enable both human engineers and AI agents to move quickly while maintaining safety guarantees. Implement patterns, abstractions, and infrastructure that reduce friction in the development workflow and enable rapid feature shipping without compromising reliability.
Own end-to-end feature delivery across the stack: Drive features from backend system design through partner-facing APIs and surfaces, leveraging AI tooling to efficiently move across boundaries. Primary focus on backend systems development in Scala and GCP, with capability to implement or iterate frontend changes using AI-assisted development practices when needed for complete feature delivery.
Architect scalable solutions and foundational platform patterns: Design distributed systems and reusable architectural patterns that enable efficient launch of new partner experiences. Create abstractions that compound in value as the platform scales across 410M+ cardholders and growing partner network including Capital One, Air Canada, Nubank, and others.
Drive asynchronous decision-making and technical leadership: Articulate technical vision and trade-off analysis through thoughtful documentation and architectural specifications. Build consensus with senior engineering peers in a low-process, autonomy-driven environment. Influence product roadmap and technical direction through clear communication of engineering constraints and opportunities.
Collaborate with product and business stakeholders: Work directly with Product Managers and business partners to refine roadmap priorities and define technical requirements. Translate business objectives into scalable technical solutions. Ensure engineering voice shapes strategic decisions about platform capabilities and partner integrations.
Lead AI-assisted development practices and guardrails: Design feedback loops and guardrails that keep AI-assisted development productive and reliable. Establish patterns for directing AI agents to build and maintain complex distributed systems. Develop judgment about when to leverage automation versus direct engineering intervention for maximum velocity and quality.
Support team growth and knowledge sharing: Provide constructive feedback to engineers at all levels. Share expertise in distributed systems, Scala development, and travel commerce architecture. Mentor others on AI-assisted development practices and technical decision-making frameworks.

What we look for

Technical

Distributed systems development in ScalaDeep experience designing and implementing distributed systems, with mastery-level proficiency in Scala. Comfortable working with Scala's functional programming paradigms, actor models, and ecosystem for building scalable backend services handling high transaction volumes.
AI-assisted development and agent orchestrationProven experience directing AI agents and automated workflows to build and maintain complex systems. Understanding of LLM strengths and limitations, including when to trust model outputs versus requiring human verification. Experience designing feedback loops that improve AI-assisted development quality over time.
GCP cloud architecture and servicesStrong experience architecting solutions on Google Cloud Platform. Proficiency with GCP compute, storage, networking, and data services. Understanding of how to design for scalability, reliability, and cost-efficiency on cloud infrastructure.
Backend system design and API architectureExperience designing production backend systems serving millions of requests at scale. Expertise in REST and event-driven architectures, database design, caching strategies, and system monitoring. Understanding of trade-offs between consistency, availability, and partition tolerance in distributed systems.
Product-driven engineering mindsetStrong product thinking anchored in customer experience rather than technical elegance for its own sake. Ability to evaluate architectural decisions based on user impact and business value. Experience shipping features end-to-end rather than optimizing individual components.

Education

Computer Science or equivalent technical foundationBachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Mathematics, or equivalent self-taught technical foundation with demonstrated expertise. Strong foundation in algorithms, data structures, and systems thinking required.

Experience

Senior-level backend engineering experienceMinimum 8+ years of professional backend software engineering experience with at least 3+ years at senior or staff level. Track record of shipping production systems that serve significant scale and complexity. Demonstrated ability to make architectural decisions that compound in value.
Platform and infrastructure scaling experienceExperience building or scaling platform infrastructure that enables multiple teams or partners to build on top. Understanding of the engineering required to maintain consistency, performance, and reliability as scale grows. Familiarity with the challenges of multi-tenant systems.
Commerce or fintech systems experienceBackground shipping commerce or fintech systems, particularly involving transaction processing, payment flows, or complex business logic. Understanding of regulatory requirements, audit trails, and reliability demands in financial services preferred but not required.
Rapid iteration and decision-makingDemonstrated ability to fearlessly dive into unknown codebases and deliver results quickly. Experience shipping features and improvements with limited upfront planning or process overhead. Comfort operating in fast-moving environments where technical vision guides implementation.

Skills

Required skills

ScalaProduction-level proficiency in Scala for building distributed backend systems. Experience with functional programming concepts, type systems, and Scala ecosystem libraries.
Distributed systems architectureStrong understanding of distributed system design patterns, consistency models, fault tolerance, and scalability. Experience with event-driven architectures and eventual consistency patterns.
GCP services and cloud architectureHands-on experience designing and operating systems on Google Cloud Platform. Proficiency with Compute, Storage, Networking, and managed services.
API design and backend systemsDeep experience designing RESTful or event-driven APIs. Expertise in database design, query optimization, caching strategies, and system monitoring.
AI-assisted software developmentWorking knowledge of LLM-based development tools and AI agent orchestration. Ability to evaluate model outputs critically and integrate AI into development workflows effectively.
Technical leadership and communicationStrong ability to articulate technical decisions, document architectural choices, and influence consensus in collaborative environments. Comfortable presenting rationale for technical trade-offs.

Nice to have

TypeScript and ReactFamiliarity with React and TypeScript frontend development. While not the primary focus, the ability to ship complete features across the stack accelerates time-to-value.
Java, Python, or Go experienceProficiency in additional programming languages. The team values stack-agnostic thinking and the ability to pick up new languages quickly as business needs evolve.
Travel, e-commerce, or fintech domain knowledgeBackground in travel booking systems, e-commerce platforms, or financial services. Understanding of domain-specific challenges accelerates ramp-up, though not required.
Multi-tenant SaaS platform experienceExperience building B2B platforms serving multiple organizations. Understanding of isolation, customization, and operational challenges in multi-tenant systems.
Production incident response and observabilityStrong practices around system observability, debugging production issues, and postmortem culture. Experience building monitoring and alerting for complex systems.

Compensation & benefits

Salary

USD 170,000 – 220,000 (annual)

Stock options

Available

Interview process

  1. 1
    Initial screening and background review — Recruiter or hiring manager reviews your background, focusing on backend systems experience, Scala or JVM language proficiency, and demonstrated shipping velocity. This screening assesses fit with the staff-level scope and travel commerce domain familiarity.
  2. 2
    Technical phone screen with senior engineer — Conversation with a member of the engineering team covering distributed systems design, architecture decision-making, and your approach to AI-assisted development. Expect questions about trade-offs you've made in production systems and how you think about scaling challenges.
  3. 3
    System design interview — Deep dive into designing a commerce or travel-related system (or similar domain). You'll present your architecture, discuss trade-offs between consistency and availability, explain how you'd handle scaling, and justify technology choices. Focus is on your ability to think through end-to-end systems at scale.
  4. 4
    Scala and backend code review discussion — Review of production code you've written or architectural decisions you've led. Discussion focuses on code quality, testing strategy, how you'd optimize for AI-assisted development velocity, and your approach to maintaining reliability while shipping fast.
  5. 5
    Stakeholder and PM collaboration interview — Conversation with Product Manager or business stakeholder to assess product thinking, communication style, and how you approach trade-offs between engineering and business needs. Demonstrates your ability to drive consensus asynchronously and articulate technical vision.
  6. 6
    AI-assisted development conversation — Discussion about your experience using LLM-based development tools, your judgment about when to trust AI outputs versus requiring human review, and how you'd design feedback loops to keep AI-assisted workflows productive. Assesses your philosophy on modern development velocity.
  7. 7
    Final round with engineering leadership — Conversation with engineering leadership or tech lead to assess cultural fit, long-term vision, and your approach to mentoring and supporting team growth. Discussion may include your thoughts on low-process, high-autonomy environments and how you drive technical decisions through influence rather than authority.
Apply for this position

You'll be redirected to the company's application page

Hopper

Hopper

View all jobs

Hopper is a travel booking app and online marketplace, leveraging data-driven technology to predict prices and help users book hotels, flights, and car rentals at the best rates.

Montreal, QC, CanadaFounded 2006hopper.com

Tech Stack

Languages
ScalaTypeScriptJavaPython
Frameworks
Play Framework or AkkaReactgRPC
Databases
PostgreSQLGoogle Cloud SpannerBigQuery
Tools
Google Cloud Platform (GCP)KubernetesCI/CD pipeline toolsAI development toolsGit and version control
Other
Event-driven architecture patternsObservability and monitoringAPI gateway and service mesh
Apply Now

On this page