Senior Backend Engineer - Travel Product (1536)

Our Journey

ShopBack began in 2014 as a late-night spark of inspiration between Henry and Joel — not just to build a Cashback platform, but to reimagine how brands and consumers connect. As former advertisers, they understood the limitations of traditional marketing, and saw an opportunity to deliver more value on both sides. That idea quickly turned into action, and the first prototype was built over a weekend with the other co-founders. Today, ShopBack serves over 50 million users across 13 markets, partners with 20,000+ merchants, and powers over half a million transactions daily. We're building The World’s Most Rewarding Way to Shop — and looking for bold, driven individuals to join us.

About the Role

At ShopBack, our engineering teams build scalable and operable platforms serving eCommerce and travel traffic across the region, delivering world‑class product experiences. You will join a diverse and talented team of engineers with strong ambitions to redefine how users discover, compare, and book travel products.

We are now expanding our Travel engineering team and are seeking experienced engineers who have built large‑scale travel or OTA (Online Travel Agency) systems. If you have worked on flight, hotel, or activities search platforms, pricing engines, real‑time availability systems, or GDS integrations, we want to speak with you.

You are someone who is resilient, self‑driven and highly motivated. You want to see the impact of your work making a difference every day. You find passion in the craft and are constantly seeking better ways to solve tough problems.

Your Adventure Ahead

• Lead and deliver large‑scale travel platform components such as flight/hotel search, pricing/availability aggregation, booking flows, or content systems.
• Contribute to ideation, technical design, implementation, and testing of high‑impact travel product features.
• Design and build robust, scalable distributed systems capable of handling real‑time travel inventory and pricing.
• Architect clean, well‑structured APIs used by client applications for search, booking, and trip management.
• Collaborate closely with Product, Data, and UX teams to shape the future of the ShopBack Travel experience.
• Work with external partners (OTAs, GDS, suppliers) to integrate APIs, understand domain constraints, and improve reliability.
• Drive engineering best practices, mentor other engineers, and elevate technical standards within the team.
• Analyze complex requirements, propose pragmatic solutions, and articulate trade-offs clearly.

Essentials to Succeed

• 7+ years of experience building consumer‑facing platforms or distributed backend systems.
• Travel / OTA experience strongly preferred. Ideal candidates have prior experience working within the travel or OTA ecosystem — such as flight metasearch, hotel aggregation, activity marketplaces, travel content platforms, or GDS/LCC/API integrations — and understand the complexities of pricing, availability, and supplier systems.
• Experience with flight or hotel domains is a strong advantage: availability, fare rules, rates & inventory, ranking/relevance, caching strategy, or booking orchestration.
• Hands-on experience working with Node.js (preferred) or other backend technologies.
• Experience deploying applications into cloud environments (AWS highly desirable).
• Strong understanding of API design, microservices, and event-driven architecture.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, complex technical environment with high ambiguity.
• Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate across engineering, product, and third-party partners.
• Demonstrated use of Generative AI tools (e.g. ChatGPT, Cursor, Claude) to develop new or improve workflows, enhance productivity, and drive efficiency at scale
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical field

Technologies We Use & Love

• Cloud: AWS
• Infra: Kubernetes
• Programming languages: NodeJS / Typescript
• Relational database: Postgres
• Message queue: Kafka, SQS
• Continuous Integration:  Gitlab
• Monitoring: DataDog
• Big Data: Redshift, Spark, S3, etc.
• Communication: Slack
• Project Management: JIRA / Confluence
• Other technologies:
• Knative Eventing / Serving
• Debezium + Kafka Connect

ShopBackers' DNA

Grit - We tackle all challenges head-on, working together to solve problems and achieve success.

Hunger - We value hard work, and having relentless drive.

Speed - We move fast and have a bias for action, all to deliver maximum impact.

Impact - We focus on results, always aiming for the best possible outcomes and timelines.

Growth - We embrace a growth mindset, constantly striving to learn, improve, and excel in our roles.

Exclusively for ShopBackers

Career progression paths and opportunities to take on greater challenges that help you realise your ambitions.

Be part of a winning team on a journey to global scale.

Competitive compensation based on your performance.

Candid, open, and collaborative culture where feedback is valued, for everyone to grow and improve every day.

Work-From-Anywhere benefit to enable you to thrive personally and professionally.

ShopBack is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other protected status under applicable laws. Join our team and help us make a difference!

We are committed to protecting your data and ensuring fairness in our recruitment process. We may use automated tools, including AI, to help our team screen applications, match candidates to roles, generate interview notes, and review assessments. These tools assist our recruiters and interviewers and they do not make final hiring decisions. If an assessment is part of your process, we may (with your consent) capture screen activity and/or webcam images during the test to help verify test integrity. We do not use AI to infer your emotions or sensitive traits. We process personal data lawfully, securely, and transparently in line with applicable data-protection laws and our commitment to fair employment. You can ask questions or exercise your rights including to request human review or to challenge an outcome by contacting dpo@shopback.com__.