Staff Backend Software Engineer - Commerce Foundations (100% Remote - Colombia)

📋 Description

• • As a Staff Backend Software Engineer on the Commerce Foundations team at Hopper Inc., you will be instrumental in architecting and building the core systems that power global travel commerce for a multitude of leading brands. This role is pivotal, as you will not merely be implementing features but defining the fundamental patterns and scalable solutions that enable our entire engineering organization to grow and innovate. You will operate as a technical leader within a dynamic, cross-functional team comprising talented engineers, designers, and product managers, all dedicated to ensuring our commerce engine remains at the forefront of the industry.
• • Your primary focus will be on architectural strategy, moving beyond the scope of individual features to meticulously design the underlying patterns for critical booking flows, seamless checkout journeys, and sophisticated multi-tenant configurations. This involves envisioning and implementing robust architectural blueprints that can accommodate a vast and growing partner ecosystem.
• • You will serve as a technical steward, defining the "North Star" for our Scala-based distributed systems. This leadership extends to guiding the team through the complexities of scaling our platform globally, ensuring that this expansion is underpinned by resilient, maintainable, and well-documented patterns that promote long-term system health and developer productivity.
• • A key aspect of this role is driving multi-tenant excellence. You will lead the evolution of our platform to prioritize "configuration over customization." This strategic shift aims to empower partners to launch world-class travel booking experiences with minimal to zero-touch engineering, significantly reducing integration friction and accelerating time-to-market for our clients.
• • Beyond technical contributions, you will significantly influence and mentor within the engineering organization. This includes conducting in-depth design reviews, providing guidance and mentorship to senior engineers, and actively fostering a culture that champions high ownership, collaborative problem-solving, and effective asynchronous decision-making.
• • Your day-to-day responsibilities will encompass architectural sovereignty, where you will lead the design, development, and operation of both API and full-stack solutions that serve as the definitive "source of truth" for Stays and Packages across all Hopper Technology Solutions (HTS) partners. This requires a deep understanding of data consistency and system reliability.
• • You will be a proactive force for systemic improvement, continuously exploring and resolving engineering challenges. This involves identifying and addressing bottlenecks within the codebase or infrastructure that could impede scalability and performance, ensuring our systems can handle increasing loads efficiently.
• • Operating with extreme autonomy, you will work closely with fellow engineers, designers, and Product Managers to achieve high alignment on complex technical roadmaps. The emphasis is on efficient, asynchronous communication and collaboration, minimizing the need for constant, synchronous meetings.
• • Cross-functional influence is crucial. You will collaborate extensively with product teams, other Hopper engineering teams, and external partner teams to guarantee that foundational logic is not only robust but also highly extensible, capable of adapting to future business needs and partner requirements.
• • Driving decision-making through high-quality documentation and asynchronous communication is paramount. You will thrive in an environment that values clear, concise written communication and respects focused work time, fostering a culture of high-alignment and minimal meeting overhead.
• • The ideal candidate possesses technical fearlessness, demonstrating a natural drive to dive deep into complex, potentially unfamiliar codebases to untangle logic and implement elegant abstractions, always with a clear focus on delivering results efficiently.
• • Strong foundational product thinking is essential. Your conception of quality will be anchored in the customer experience, but you will possess a deep understanding that a truly great experience is built upon a stable, predictable, and highly performant commerce engine.
• • Mastery of distributed systems is a core requirement. You should have deep experience with, or a proven ability to rapidly master, distributed system development in Scala. A thorough understanding of the trade-offs between consistency, availability, and latency in a global environment is expected.
• • A multi-tenant mindset is critical. You must prioritize "configuration over customization," demonstrating a talent for building modular, adaptable systems that can effectively support a large number of partners with minimal manual intervention.
• • Finally, you will exhibit pragmatic vision, possessing the ability to discern between aspects that require immediate perfection and those that can be iterated upon, effectively balancing long-term system health with the imperative for speed and agility in a fast-paced startup environment.