Engineering Manager - Fintech, Lodging

About the job

At HTS, we're rebuilding how travelers shop and book trips — and reshaping how hotel distributors, chains, and OTAs monetize flexibility. Hotels CFAR (Cancel For Any Reason) is one of HTS's fastest-growing fintech products: a cancellation service embedded directly into partner booking flows, letting travelers cancel for any reason and receive a refund, no questions asked. It's a B2B2C product — sold through partners, exercised by travelers, and powered by HTS.

We're looking for an engineering leader who can do two things at once: run a high‑performing product team building durable, scalable systems, and be a credible, partner‑facing technical leader who can sit across the table from a partner's CTO, scope an integration, and ship it.

This is an AI‑era engineering leadership role, and the shape of the job reflects that:

• Small team, high leverage. You'll lead a tight team of ~3 engineers max. We're not scaling headcount linearly with scope — we're scaling output through AI tooling, sharper prioritization, and senior engineers operating with more autonomy.
• You ship, too. When you're not in partner‑facing calls or unblocking the team, you're producing actual artifacts with AI — prototypes, integration scaffolding, technical specs, partner‑facing API examples, internal tooling. The bar is "manager who codes with AI," not "manager who reviews PRs from a distance."
• Blended roles are the new normal. Engineers on this team have a real voice in product direction, and non‑technical partners (PMs, Solutions, even Sales) contribute code in narrow ways with AI assistance. You'll lean into this — coach engineers on product thinking, set guardrails for non‑engineer contributions, and treat the org chart as a guideline, not a wall.

• Lead the architecture, development, and rollout of the Hotels CFAR platform — including offer/pricing/order/exercise APIs, the merchandising and UI SDK layer, synthetic rate bundling, and the exercise/payout infrastructure.
• Own partner integrations end‑to‑end: scope technical solutions, lead solutioning calls, design integration patterns, and partner with sales and Solutions to move partners from Discovery → Solutioning → Development → Live.
• Drive the foundation work that lets us scale: partner management portal, configuration tooling, self‑serve onboarding — the infrastructure that decouples partner growth from engineering headcount.
• Be the senior technical voice in partner conversations — translate between partner engineering teams, our APIs, and our product strategy; own SLAs, performance, and partner‑specific requirements.
• Partner with Product, Risk/Pricing, Ops, and GTM to align engineering output to business outcomes: attach rate, contribution profit, partner launch velocity, and loss ratio.
• Foster technical excellence — architecture reviews, mentorship, raising the bar on the senior ICs and tech leads on the team.

• Experience leading engineering teams building B2B/B2B2C platforms with real, named external partners on the other side — not just internal stakeholders.
• A strong technical background across backend systems (APIs, orchestration, distributed systems), frontend SDKs / embedded UI, and cloud infrastructure.
• Direct experience as a partner/customer‑facing technical leader — running solutioning calls, scoping integrations, owning SLAs, and unblocking deployments.
• Comfort with fintech, insurance‑adjacent, or transactional products — money movement, refunds, pricing engines, contracts, audit trails.
• Familiarity with the travel distribution landscape a bonus — booking engines, agent portals, bedbanks, OTAs, PSS/inventory platforms (Sabre, Amadeus), or hotel CRS/chain systems — is a strong plus.
• Experience with Scala or Java, REST APIs, OAuth
  2.0, and cloud infrastructure (GCP, AWS); frontend exposure (React, JS/TS) for SDK and merchandising work.
• A collaborative, product‑minded approach — able to partner closely with Sales, Product, Risk, and Ops without losing engineering rigor.
• A bias for action and a passion for mentoring and growing senior engineering talent.

• 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 Work‑from‑home stipend.
• 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.