Senior Backend Engineer - Lodging and Cars

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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Well-funded and proven startup with large ambitions, competitive salary and the upsides of pre-IPO equity packages.
• Unlimited PTO.
• Carrot Cash travel stipend.
• Access to co-working space on demand through Flex Desk and a Work-from-home stipend.
• Please ask us about our very generous parental leave, much above industry standards.
• Entrepreneurial culture where pushing limits and taking risks is everyday business.
• Open communication with management and company leadership.
• Small, dynamic teams = massive impact.
• 100% employer paid Medical, Dental and Vision coverage for employees.
• Access to Disability & Life insurance.
• Health Reimbursement Account (HRA).
• DCA/ FSA and access to 401k plan.

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. The 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 millennia ls.

While everyone knows us as the Gen Z and Millennial…