Senior Java Software Engineer, Platform team

About this 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 ROLE Our Backend Platform team builds and maintains the core infrastructure, frameworks, and runtime systems that every engineering team at KAYAK relies on. We're looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join us in Kaunas and help evolve these shared foundations — improving how we deploy, observe, and scale our services so that product teams across the company can ship faster and more safely. You'll collaborate closely with teammates on technical decisions, contribute to meaningful platform improvements, and grow alongside a supportive group of experienced engineers. This role requires working from our Kaunas office at least 3 days per week. IN THIS ROLE YOU WILL: - Contribute to the evolution of shared backend platform capabilities, frameworks, and runtime patterns that engineering teams across the company can adopt consistently. - Help shape backend platform direction around Java code structure, service architecture, and standardisation of common runtime patterns such as Spring Boot–based services. - Improve deployment quality and developer velocity by designing better CI/CD workflows, pull-request quality gates, and production-ready release practices. - Contribute to platform roadmap initiatives such as web gateways, multi-cluster deployment, faster pod startup, on-demand test environments, secure service-to-service communication, and AI-driven observability. - Partner with product engineering teams to understand their infrastructure needs and translate those into platform improvements. - Participate in design reviews, share knowledge with colleagues, and help raise the overall quality of the team's technical output. PLEASE APPLY IF YOU HAVE: - 4+ years of backend or platform engineering experience, preferably in Java or a similar ecosystem, with strong experience designing and operating distributed systems at scale. - Hands-on experience with Kubernetes or similar container orchestration tools and cloud-native infrastructure. - Solid understanding of backend service architecture, API design, and the trade-offs involved in building shared engineering platforms. - Experience improving CI/CD pipelines, deployment processes, or test quality in production environments. - A strong observability and reliability mindset, with practical experience in monitoring, troubleshooting, and improving operational health. - Good communication skills and the ability to collaborate effectively with teams across the company. - Professional proficiency in written and spoken English. Nice to have (not required): - Experience with Spring / Spring Boot and modern JVM performance practices. - Familiarity with multi-cluster deployment models, zero-trust service communication, Kubernetes-hosted developer environments, or ephemeral test environments. Equivalent experience, training, or transferable skills are considered in place of any specific requirement listed above. COMPENSATION: Salary consists of three elements: Base pay: from 3330 EUR up to 6660 EUR gross monthly. In addition: - Significant yearly bonuses, approx 10 percent of annual salary. - Booking Holdings RSU (Restricted Stock Units) package, worth 20000 USD gross, with possibility to receive yearly refreshes. BENEFITS: - Work from (almost) anywhere for up to 20 days per year - Funds for your career growth - Access to thousands of on-demand e-learnings - Generous additional Health Insurance - Flexible sick time off - Additional financial support for your sick leave - Additional day off on your birthday - Company-wide vacation week once a year (winter holidays) - Additional financial support during parental leave - Free lunch twice a week and daily snacks at the office - Free yoga twice a week - Paid volunteering time - No meeting Fridays - Office and team events such as summer camp, KAYAK birthday, winter party and more! - Company-paid therapy sessions through SpringHealth - Company-paid subscription to HeadSpace - Internal Communities INCLUSION At KAYAK, we want everyone to have the space to grow, share ideas and do great work. That’s why we’re focused on hiring the best talent from all walks of life and experiences, supporting them well and making sure no one feels like they have to fit a mold to belong here. If you need accommodations during the application or interview process, or on the job, we’re here to support you. Please reach out to your recruiter to request any accommodations. #LI-MP1