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

📋 Description

• • As a Staff Backend Software Engineer on the Commerce Foundations team at Hopper Inc., you will play a pivotal role in architecting and developing the core systems that power global travel commerce for major brands. This is a unique opportunity to operate at a Staff level, focusing on foundational patterns and technical stewardship rather than just feature delivery. You will be instrumental in shaping the "how" behind our scalable, resilient, and extensible booking flows, search orchestration, checkout journeys, and overarching platform capabilities that support Stays and Packages across multiple partner portals worldwide.
• • Your primary responsibility will be to drive the architectural strategy for our backend services. This involves moving beyond individual feature development to designing robust, underlying patterns for complex booking flows, seamless checkout journeys, and sophisticated multi-tenant configurations. You will be the technical leader within a cross-functional team, collaborating closely with exceptional engineers, designers, and product managers to ensure our commerce engine remains world-class and capable of supporting massive scale.
• • You will provide technical stewardship, defining the "North Star" for our Scala-based distributed systems. This leadership is crucial as we continue our trajectory towards global scale, ensuring that our architecture is not only performant but also maintainable and robust. A key focus will be on multi-tenant excellence, where 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 experiences with minimal to zero-touch engineering, significantly reducing their time-to-market and operational overhead.
• • As a Staff Engineer, you are expected to raise the bar for the entire engineering organization. This will be achieved through conducting deep-dive design reviews, providing insightful technical guidance, and actively mentoring senior engineers. You will foster a culture of high-ownership, where individuals feel empowered to take responsibility for their work, and promote asynchronous decision-making processes that enhance efficiency and reduce meeting overhead.
• • Your day-to-day activities will involve architectural sovereignty, where you will lead the design, build, and operation of 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 distributed systems and a commitment to building highly available and consistent services.
• • You will also be responsible for systemic improvement, proactively identifying and resolving engineering bottlenecks in the codebase or infrastructure that might hinder scalability. This includes exploring new technologies and approaches to enhance performance, reliability, and efficiency.
• • Operating with extreme autonomy, you will work closely with fellow engineers, designers, and Product Managers to ensure high alignment on complex technical roadmaps. This high-alignment leadership model minimizes the need for constant meetings, allowing for focused work and efficient progress.
• • Cross-functional influence is another key aspect of this role. You will collaborate effectively with the product team, other Hopper teams, and external partner teams to ensure that foundational logic is not only robust but also highly extensible to meet future demands.
• • Embracing asynchronous excellence, you will drive decision-making through high-quality documentation and clear communication channels, thriving in a culture that values deep work and minimizes synchronous interruptions.
• • The ideal candidate possesses technical fearlessness, a natural drive to dive into complex, potentially unknown codebases to untangle logic and implement elegant abstractions while maintaining a focus on delivering results rapidly. Strong product thinking, anchored in the customer experience but understanding the critical role of a stable commerce engine, is essential.
• • Mastery of distributed systems, particularly in Scala, or a proven ability to rapidly acquire this expertise, is a must. You should understand the trade-offs between consistency, availability, and latency in a global environment. A multi-tenant mindset, prioritizing "configuration over customization" and building modular systems, is also critical. Finally, pragmatic vision, the ability to distinguish between what needs to be perfect from the outset and what can be iterated upon, balancing long-term system health with the imperative for speed, will set you apart.