Senior Java Engineer, Generative Content

KAYAK, part of Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG), is the world’s 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 highly skilled and driven Senior Backend Software Engineer to join our Generative Content team, where you'll be working on an array of technically complex products including AI-powered systems, Xsell(cross-selling), personalization, and scalable backend infrastructure. As a key contributor to the development of KAYAK’s AI platform, you’ll design and implement high-performance APIs, create optimized data models and database schemas, and develop algorithms for data analytics and real-time decision making. You’ll tackle large-scale performance challenges in a highly distributed environment, collaborating with geographically diverse teams across the organization to drive impactful business solutions.

If you’re passionate about travel and technology, and love solving complex problems, we want you on our team!

Please note, you will be required to be in the Concord, MA office at least 3 days a week.

In this role, you will:

• Design, develop and maintain high performance solutions for our generative content applications
• Collaborate cross functionally with other teams including engineering, product, data science and design to drive engineering solutions across the company and deliver a high quality software product
• Write automated tests across the entire testing pyramid including unit tests, integration tests, API tests, end to end tests etc to test our systems and drive quality for our applications
• Implement and drive coding best practices across our systems to improve the quality and maintainability of our code
• Collaborate with team members to perform code reviews, share knowledge and learn and grow together
• Identify and debug software problems to drive the product and business requirements
• Analyze and resolve complex scalability and performance issues within our product

Please apply if you have:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience
• 3+ years Java experience, experience with Java web development a plus
• Great programming fundamentals
• Proven understanding of data structures, algorithms, and software design principles
• Excellent problem solving skills and ability to work independently as well as collaboratively in a team environment
• Strong communication skills to effectively articulate technical concepts to technical as well as non-technical members of the team
• Good understanding of relational database like MySQL, Oracle etc
• 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 thousand of on-demand e-learnings
• Travel Discounts
• Employee Resource Groups
• Competitive retirement and health plans
• Free lunch 2 days per week
• Fun quarterly events such as boat trips, arcades, ski trips, Thursday happy hours, and more

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

At OpenTable/KAYAK, we aspire to be a workplace that fosters inclusion and reflects the diverse communities we serve. Hiring people with different backgrounds and perspectives is critical to innovation and to how we deliver great experiences for our users, partners, and teams. We strive to be an open and welcoming environment so that no matter who you are, you can be yourself.

We ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform job responsibilities, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request an accommodation(s).