Senior Software Engineer I - Backend (For temp workers)
Requirements
Requires at least five years of backend development experience, strong Java and Spring Boot expertise, and experience with APIs, distributed systems, microservices, Kubernetes, Kafka, databases, testing, observability, and CI/CD. Candidates should be able to lead technical work independently, debug complex issues, mentor engineers, and communicate effectively.
Job Description
- Able to become productive within the first few weeks.
- Comfortable working in large, existing codebases.
- Strong engineering fundamentals and pragmatic decision making.
- Excellent debugging and problem-solving skills.
- Clear written and verbal communication.
- Advanced Claude and Codex usage.
- Reliable delivery with minimal supervision.
- Able to estimate work realistically and communicate risks early.
- Comfortable working in fast-paced Agile environments.
We are looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to design, build, and evolve scalable, reliable, and high-performance backend services.
This role is suited for engineers who can quickly understand complex distributed systems, make sound technical decisions, lead implementation of large initiatives, and consistently deliver production-ready software with minimal supervision. In addition to hands-on development, you will help drive technical excellence through architecture, code quality, and mentoring.
Responsibilities
- Design, implement, and maintain scalable backend services and APIs.
- Lead the technical implementation of medium to large engineering initiatives.
- Design resilient, observable, and fault-tolerant distributed systems.
- Write clean, maintainable, and well-tested Java code.
- Review technical designs and provide architectural guidance.
- Troubleshoot complex production issues and perform root cause analysis.
- Improve system performance, reliability, scalability, and operational excellence.
- Drive engineering best practices, code quality, and testing standards.
- Participate in code reviews and mentor other engineers.
- Contribute to CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, and operational tooling.
- Collaborate closely with product managers, frontend engineers, and infrastructure teams.
- 5+ years of professional backend development experience.
- Strong expertise in Java and Spring Boot.
- Extensive experience designing and building REST APIs.
- Strong experience with distributed systems and microservice architectures.
- Experience with Kubernetes and containerized applications.
- Experience with Kafka or similar messaging technologies.
- Experience with relational databases and data modeling.
- Strong understanding of scalability, reliability, resiliency, and fault tolerance.
- Experience with observability, monitoring, logging, and alerting.
- Experience writing unit, integration, and end-to-end tests.
- Strong debugging and production troubleshooting skills.
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines and production deployments.
- Ability to drive technical solutions independently.
- Strong code review and mentoring experience.
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
- Experience with GraphQL.
- Experience with AWS or GCP.
- Experience with SLOs, SLIs, and error budgets.
- Experience with A/B testing platforms.
- Experience optimizing JVM performance.
- Experience working on high-scale consumer platforms.
- Experience leading technical initiatives across multiple teams.
Skills
About Booking.com
A career at Booking.com is all about the journey, helping you explore new challenges in a place where you can be your best self. With plenty of exciting twists, turns and opportunities along the way. We’ve always been pioneers, on a mission to shape the future of travel through cutting edge technology, to make it easier for everyone to enjoy amazing experiences wherever they go. Under a desert sky, or in the heart of a bustling city. Discovering the perfect hideaway, or the perfect paella. When you join us, you’ll be part of a community where taking a different path and trying something new is celebrated and supported. And where making a difference counts. We’re determined to make the world of travel more sustainable, more accessible, and more inclusive, to create a positive impact on a global scale. That’s why we’re always looking for people who search for better solutions, the ones eager to stray off the beaten path to find new ways of doing things. Because at Booking.com it’s more than a job, it’s a journey we’re on together.
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