Senior Engineering Manager, K4B

KAYAK; Berlin; On-site; EUR 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Work from almost anywhere (up to 20%?

Company-paid mental health support

HeadSpace subscription

No meetings on Fridays

Paid parental leave

Paid volunteer time

Development dollars

Leadership development

On-demand e-learnings

Travel discounts

Employee resource groups

Six weeks paid vacation + birthday

Free lunch 2 days a week

Pension plan contributions

Public transport subsidies

Bike leasing

Monthly social events

KAYAK office in Friedrichshain, Berlin

Job summary

KAYAK seeks an experienced engineering leader to own end-to-end delivery for agile teams in Berlin. You will shape the technical roadmap, enforce best practices, and drive talent management across engineers.

The role requires deep experience in distributed systems, API design, and scalable backend architectures. You will collaborate with product managers, designers, and peers to deliver multi-team initiatives, mentor engineers, and foster a culture of continuous improvement while ensuring

Qualifications

• 3+ years leading engineering teams within travel industry focused on supplier integrations (Direct APIs, GDS, NDC).
• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 5 years in engineering leadership or management.
• Proven data-driven, results-oriented track record and ability to rapidly learn new domains.
• Experience transforming organizations with agile methodologies and process optimization.
• Strong fundamentals in distributed systems, API design, and backend architecture; ability to guide architectural decisions.
• Experience owning full people management lifecycle: hiring, onboarding, performance management, career development, promotions.
• Experience coaching engineers at multiple levels including senior engineers and tech leads.
• Solid understanding of agile delivery, CI/CD, automated testing, and observability.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management; able to articulate technical vision to diverse audiences.
• Proficiency with modern tooling (GitHub, Jira) and openness to AI-assisted development tools.
• Comfort operating in a distributed, multilingual org across time zones and offices.
• Degree in Computer Science or related field; equivalent experience acceptable

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end delivery for one or more agile engineering teams, shipping high-quality software aligned with KPIs.
• Define and drive the technical roadmap with product managers and peers to translate goals into a plan.
• Design and enforce engineering best practices across codebase, including DoD criteria.
• Lead hiring and performance management for a software team and manage the full employee lifecycle.
• Coach and develop engineers at all levels through regular 1:1s and career conversations.
• Collaborate with product, design, and engineering managers to plan multi-team initiatives with clear alignment.
• Identify and remove delivery risks and drive improvements proactively.
• Champion a culture of quality and continuous improvement with blameless post-mortems and incident response.
• Influence architecture across the domain; participate in design reviews and ensure scalable, reliable systems.
• Contribute to engineering presence, talent acquisition, onboarding, and culture in line with company expansion

Skills

Leadership experience

Agile methodologies

Stakeholder management

Mentoring and coaching

English proficiency

Strategic thinking

Problem solving

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

GitHub

Jira

Observability tools

CI/CD tooling

Job description

This role will be required to work from our Berlin office at least 3 days per week.

In this role you will:

• Own end-to-end delivery for one or more agile engineering teams, ensuring the team consistently ships high-quality software aligned with product and business objectives, measured against clear KPIs.

• Define and drive the technical roadmap for your team's domain — collaborating with product managers and peer engineering leaders to translate business goals into a prioritized, executable plan.

• Design and enforce engineering best practices across the team's codebase, including coding standards, testing strategies, observability, and clear Definition of Done criteria, raising the overall quality bar.

• Lead hiring and performance management for a team of software engineers, owning the full employee lifecycle from sourcing and onboarding through career development, performance reviews, and promotions.

• Coach and develop engineers at all levels — including senior engineers and emerging technical leads — through regular 1:1s, structured feedback, and deliberate career conversations that build the next generation of leaders.

• Collaborate cross-functionally with product managers, designers, and peer engineering managers to plan and deliver complex, multi-team initiatives, ensuring clear alignment on scope, dependencies, and timelines.

• Identify and remove delivery risks proactively — whether organizational, technical, or process-related — and drive improvements without waiting to be directed, keeping the team operating at high velocity.

• Champion a culture of quality and continuous improvement, embedding practices such as blameless post-mortems, structured incident response, and iterative process refinement into the team's day-to-day rhythm.

• Influence technical architecture across the team's domain by preparing and participating in design reviews, guiding architectural decisions, and ensuring systems are built for scalability, reliability, and long-term maintainability.

• Help build and shape the engineering presence, contributing to local talent acquisition, onboarding, and team culture as part of the organization's strategic expansion of its engineering hub.

Please apply if you have:

• 3+ years of experience leading engineering teams within the travel industry focused on supplier integrations (such as flights, hotels, or trains using Direct APIs, GDS, NDC, NDC[X]) or managing teams executing large-scale third-party content integrations.

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 5 years in an engineering leadership or management role directly managing software engineers, and a proven track record of leading productive teams and shipping high-quality software in a fast-paced environment; equivalent experience, training, or transferable skills considered.

• A proven track record of ownership and innovation within a data-driven, results-oriented environment, along with the ability to rapidly learn and master new business domains.

• A track record of steering organizational transformation, maximizing gains from agile methodologies, and fostering process optimization and innovation.

• Strong technical fundamentals in distributed systems, API design, and backend service architecture, with the ability to credibly guide architectural decisions and participate meaningfully in design reviews.

• Demonstrated experience owning the full people management lifecycle — hiring, onboarding, performance management, career development, and promotions — with a genuine commitment to developing engineering talent.

• Experience coaching and developing engineers at multiple levels, including senior engineers and emerging technical leads, through structured feedback, regular 1:1s, and deliberate career conversations.

• Solid understanding of agile delivery methodologies and the software development lifecycle, including CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and observability practices; comfortable driving process improvements within a sprint-based team.

• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to articulate a clear technical vision to both technical and non-technical audiences and collaborate effectively across product, design, and engineering functions.

• Professional proficiency in written and spoken English.

• Hands-on experience with modern software development tooling — including version control systems (e.g., GitHub), issue tracking (e.g., Jira), and logging or observability platforms — and a demonstrated openness to adopting AI-assisted development tools to improve team productivity.

• Comfort working in a distributed, multilingual engineering organization with teams across multiple time zones and office locations.

• A degree in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience; no specific certification is required.

Benefits and Perks:

• Work from (almost) anywhere for up to 20 days per year

• Focus on mental health and well-being:

  • Company-paid therapy sessions through SpringHealth

  • Company-paid subscription to HeadSpace

  • Company-wide week off a year - the whole team fully recharges (and returns without a pile-up of work!)

• No meeting Fridays

• Paid parental leave

• Paid volunteer time

• Focus on your career growth:

  • Development Dollars

  • Leadership development

  • Access to thousands of on-demand e-learnings

• Travel Discounts

• Employee Resource Groups

• 6 weeks paid vacation + a day off for your birthday

• Free lunch 2 days per week

• Pension plan contributions

• Public transportation subsidies

• Bike leasing program

• Monthly social events, Thursday happy hours, sports teams

• An awesome office in Friedrichshain, Berlin

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.

Need any adjustments for the interview, application or on the job? No problem - just give us a heads-up. We’ve got you.

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