Senior Software Engineer, Backend -- Booking Platform & APIs

Job Description

Senior Software Engineer, Backend — Booking Platform & APIs

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New York, NY

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We are representing a client that is hiring a Senior Software Engineer to lead the technical work and be the primary hands-on builder for our API. In your first year, multiple distribution partners and an authorized AI agent should complete real bookings through the same versioned API.

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You will evolve a production Rails and Postgres booking system used by millions of guests. The hard work is keeping prices and inventory correct, preventing overselling, surviving retries and partial failures, and reconciling systems when they disagree.

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Your ownership and team

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You will own the API’s day-to-day technical roadmap and design decisions. In this hands-on individual contributor role, you will write production code, lead focused designs, guide migrations, and operate what you build. You will partner with our Staff Engineer on foundational domain and architecture choices.

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You will be the primary builder, but you will not work alone. Other backend engineers will contribute and build supply, PMS, and POS connectors using the patterns you establish. Product, Partnerships, and hotel operations will work with you from requirements through production launch.

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This is one of our highest-impact technical bets. What you build will determine how quickly Our client can enter new booking channels and categories.

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This role works from our NYC headquarters four days per week. The base salary range is $190,000–$210,000, plus equity, based on experience.

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What you’ll do

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• Build and launch the external Client API. Define stable, versioned contracts for live pricing, availability, holds, booking creation, changes, and cancellations.
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• Make booking operations safe under real failures. Design idempotency, recovery, webhooks, and reconciliation for retries, timeouts, duplicates, and partial success.
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• Evolve the core booking domain. Create clear models and invariants for products, schedules, prices, inventory, holds, carts, and bookings.
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• Make the platform extensible. Prove that a new category such as events or food and beverage can use the shared booking model instead of requiring a separate system.
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• Own the architecture for supply, PMS, and POS integrations. Create reusable connector patterns so other engineers can add partners without reinventing failure handling and reconciliation.
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• Define the data contracts that keep inventory discoverable through OpenSearch. Search is supporting technology for this role, not its primary ownership area.
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• Operate what you build. Set reliability and latency targets, and add the tests, metrics, dashboards, alerts, tracing, and runbooks needed for a critical booking path.
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• Turn partner needs into durable platform capabilities, explain tradeoffs clearly, and raise the engineering bar through practical reviews and mentoring.
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How we ship

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We move quickly by building quality from the start. A change is done when it is tested, deployed, observable, and safe to roll back. We use AI tools aggressively, but engineers remain accountable for architecture, correctness, and production outcomes.

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Tech stack

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• Backend: Ruby on Rails, Node.js
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• Data: Postgres, MongoDB
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• Search: OpenSearch
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• APIs and integrations: REST, OpenAPI, webhooks
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• Infrastructure and observability: AWS, Datadog
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• Testing: RSpec, Playwright
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Who you are

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We encourage candidates to apply even if they do not match every line below.

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• You have 6+ years of software engineering experience, or a track record of equivalent impact.
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• You have designed transactional systems, built external APIs or integration platforms, and safely evolved data models in production.
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• You understand relational modeling, concurrency, consistency, asynchronous workflows, and distributed failures.
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• You turn complex business rules into clear boundaries, lifecycle states, contracts, and invariants.
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• You can lead an important system as its primary builder while collaborating on foundational decisions.
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• You care about correctness, testing, observability, and safe rollouts.
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• You communicate directly, listen well, and improve the work of engineers around you.
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Ruby on Rails experience is useful, but not required. Experience with marketplaces, reservations, inventory-constrained commerce, public APIs, or third-party booking systems is also helpful. We care most about your backend judgment, track record, and ability to learn.

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What success looks like in 6–12 months

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• Multiple distribution partners and an authorized AI agent complete real bookings through one reusable API.
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• The full booking lifecycle meets agreed targets for correctness, success rate, latency, overselling, recovery, and reconciliation.
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• Reusable contracts and connector patterns materially reduce the work required to onboard the next partner.
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• The shared booking model supports at least one new category without a separate booking system.
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As the API becomes a company-wide platform, this role can grow toward Staff through demonstrated impact across the booking domain, integrations, and distribution.

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Benefits

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• Health, dental, and vision coverage, with our client contributing to monthly premiums
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• Stock options
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• 401(k) plan
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• Unlimited paid time off
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• Paid parental leave
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