Engineering Manager

About Us: At Booking.com, data drives our decisions. Technology is at our core. And innovation is everywhere. But our company is more than datasets, lines of code or A/B tests. We’re the thrill of the first night in a new place. The excitement of the next morning. The friends you encounter. The journeys you take. The sights you see. And the memories you make. Through our products, partners and people, we make it easier for everyone to experience the world.
Role Description:
As an Engineering Manager within one of our Marketplace teams, you are accountable for building and leading a high-performing engineering team responsible for maintaining and evolving mission-critical systems. You create the environment in which engineers design, build and operate reliable, scalable platform components, ensuring strong and rational technical decision-making, software delivery and operational excellence, and sustainable execution.
You will be considered for one of those 2 teams:
Conversational Platform Team: “Enable seamless and secure conversational experience for travelers allowing them to comfortably communicate across different modalities (text, voice, video)”. A unified conversational ecosystem for travellers that can handle multiple intents across all stages of the traveller journey.
We anticipate and solve customer needs using conversations. Our ecosystem processes and stores millions of conversations per day and intelligently routes messages to the right human or AI actors.
Order Platform Team: The Order Platform is the home for all reservation data in Booking.com. Every time a customer clicks on the book button, we become the source of truth of the reservation that was made. We orchestrate its creation and any other subsequent changes, we store the data and make it available via multiple access patterns.
Key Job Responsibilities and Duties:
People Leadership
Directly manage engineers, including performance, talent and compensation aspects
Lead by example by taking ownership, being proactive and collaborating
Cultivate engineering talent in the team
Foster a great culture that innovates, work together as a team, partner with other Booking.com teams/roles and celebrate unified success
Respect the Booking.com values and use them as a guide to the way we work
Technology, Craft & Delivery
Guide engineers in making sound technical decisions, considering high traffic, versatile consumer needs, cost efficiency and other complexity factors
Guide engineers in architecting the domain defining the service granularity, boundaries, communication patterns, considering auth, privacy, compliance and security
Set up and continuously improve engineering delivery, quality and SDLC practices within own team
Deliver the wider engineering strategic objectives by tailoring them to your own team’s scope
Embed and continuously improve the agile ways of working within the team
Get deep into the technical detail (where required) to coach, support and mentor the team
Adhere to the existing and develop new principles for architecture, quality, service health and non-functional requirements
Contribute to the evolution of best practices across the department
Drive a culture of ownership, technical and operational excellence, including reactive work such as incident escalations
Learn new technologies and keep abreast of existing technologies to be able to share learnings and apply these to a variety of projects when needed
Architecture & Product Strategy
Define, prioritise and deliver the roadmap ensuring high organisational and delivery performance
Build new product capabilities, processes and operational plans
Drive stakeholder alignment required for successful technical strategy realisation and execution
Negotiate on the strategic importance of own product roadmap features
Drive innovation in the team
Own the architecture principles and decision records across the team
Role Qualifications and Requirements
10+ years of relevant experience in software development, building and scaling high-traffic, distributed systems
E-commerce, marketplace, messaging or other suitable platform experience strongly preferred
2+ years of experience managing teams and performance
Expertise in Java and JVM-based microservices is preferred; experience with Golang, Scala, or Python is a plus
Proven experience modernizing legacy systems and leading major replatforming or migration efforts
Demonstrated ownership of critical production systems, including technical debt reduction and documentation
Prior experience running large-scale experiments (A/B testing) that drive measurable business impact
Experience in large scale data processing and workflow management is a plus
Benefits & Perks - Global Impact, Personal Relevance:
Booking.com’s Total Rewards Philosophy is not only about compensation but also about benefits. We offer a competitive compensation and benefits package, as well unique-to-Booking.com benefits which include:
Annual paid time off and generous paid leave scheme including: parent, grandparent, bereavement, and care leave
Hybrid working including flexible working arrangements, and up to 20 days per year working from abroad (home country)
Industry leading product discounts - up to 1400 per year - for yourself, including automatic Genius Level 3 status and Booking.com wallet credit
Inclusion at Booking.com:
Inclusion has been a core part of our company culture since day one. This ongoing journey starts with our very own employees, who represent over 140 nationalities and a wide range of ethnic and social backgrounds, genders and sexual orientations.
Take it from our Chief People Officer, Paulo Pisano: “At Booking.com, the diversity of our people doesn’t just build an outstanding workplace, it also creates a better and more inclusive travel experience for everyone. Inclusion is at the heart of everything we do. It’s a place where you can make your mark and have a real impact in travel and tech.”
We ensure that colleagues with disabilities are provided the adjustments and tools they need to participate in the job application and interview process, to perform crucial job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment.
Application Process:
This section should provide:
Let’s go places together: How we Hire
The interview process entails: a Recruiter interview, and a total of 4 interviews, all conducted via Zoom video call.
This role does not come with relocation assistance.
Booking.com is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. We strive to move well beyond traditional equal opportunity and work to create an environment that allows everyone to thrive.
Pre-Employment Screening
If your application is successful, your personal data may be used for a pre-employment screening check by a third party as permitted by applicable law. Depending on the vacancy and applicable law, a pre-employment screening may include employment history, education and other information (such as media information) that may be necessary for determining your qualifications and suitability for the position.