About the role
KAYAK, part of Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG), is a 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. The Backend Platform team owns the core infrastructure, frameworks, and runtime systems that every engineering team at KAYAK depends on. As a Senior Engineering Manager, you will lead a group of highly talented senior engineers and principals modernising our infrastructure, standardising our Java architecture, reshaping deployment strategy, process and tooling around it, and reimagining observability. This is a role for someone who finds equal satisfaction in coaching engineers and in shipping platform improvements that make the whole organisation faster. This role will be required to work from our Kaunas office at least 3 days per week. In this role you will: Lead and mentor a team of senior backend engineers and principals, providing technical guidance, performance feedback, and career development support. Own
the team’s technical roadmap, aligning priorities with engineering leadership to support the broader platform strategy. Drive adoption of modern backend infrastructure practices to improve reliability, scalability, and developer velocity. Champion backend architecture decisions by leading design reviews and collaborating with technical leaders across engineering. Set and enforce engineering best practices for coding, testing, code coverage, and deployment quality. Manage day-to-day team operations by removing blockers, balancing the backlog, and maintaining high standards for reliability and security. Collaborate with engineering managers from other teams and cross-functional stakeholders to resolve dependencies and support product teams across the company. Monitor team health and delivery metrics, identifying risks early and adjusting priorities as needed. Recruit and onboard backend engineering talent to support the platform roadmap. Please apply if you have: 8+ years of backend or platform software development experience, with strong knowledge of distributed systems and service architecture. Experience leading or managing backend engineers, including senior engineers or technical leaders, with a strong track record in performance management, coaching, and team development. Hands-on experience with Kubernetes and cloud-native infrastructure. Solid understanding of modern CI/CD practices, deployment quality, release engineering, and operating production systems at scale. Strong knowledge of API design, microservices patterns, and backend frameworks. Java and Spring Boot experience are a plus but not a necessity. Confidence with observability and monitoring tooling, with a track record of improving production reliability and operational excellence. Strong project leadership skills and the ability to prioritise across competing roadmap, technical debt, and cross-team demands. Excellent communication skills, with experience collaborating across cross-functional teams and influencing technical decisions beyond your own team. Professional proficiency in written and spoken English. A degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field — or equivalent practical experience.