Senior Software Engineer - Backend

On the Beach; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 85,000 - 115,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

25 days holiday

Holidays discount

Learnerbly learning platform

Enhanced family leave

Employee Assistance Programme

Health plan

SIP - Share Incentive Plan

Cycle to Work

Job summary

On the Beach is seeking a Senior Software Engineer (Backend) to design and build scalable backend services and platforms across our travel tech estate. You’ll work on distributed systems, cloud-native architectures and APIs powering supplier integrations and customer experiences.

In this senior role you’ll own complex components, collaborate with product and other engineers, and help shape our deployment, observability and reliability practices while delivering performant, resilient systems in

Qualifications

• Strong commercial backend software engineering
• C# and .NET or comparable experience building modern backend applications
• Designing and developing APIs
• Building distributed systems and service-oriented architectures
• Developing cloud-native applications, ideally within AWS
• Working with messaging, asynchronous processing or event-driven architecture
• Designing reliable integrations with external or internal systems
• SQL and/or NoSQL data stores
• Building scalable systems handling significant traffic or data volumes
• Performance optimisation, caching and latency reduction
• Designing for resilience and failure
• Containerisation and orchestration technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes
• Observability, monitoring and operating production systems
• Automated testing and modern engineering practices

Responsibilities

• Designing and building scalable backend applications and services
• Developing APIs used by customer-facing applications and internal systems
• Integrating with external suppliers and third-party platforms
• Building systems that process high volumes of requests and data
• Designing distributed and event-driven architectures
• Working with asynchronous messaging and streaming technologies
• Solving problems around performance, latency, resilience and availability
• Improving caching and data-access strategies
• Building reliable transactional workflows
• Developing applications and services within AWS
• Deploying and operating containerised applications
• Improving monitoring, alerting and observability
• Exploring AI-assisted engineering and modern development tooling

Skills

Backend engineering

C# / .NET

API design

Distributed systems

AWS

Messaging / event-driven

SQL / NoSQL

Performance optimization

Resilience & reliability

Observability & monitoring

Automated testing

System design thinking

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD pipelines

Job description

About the Role

As a Senior Software Engineer (Backend), you’ll design and build scalable applications, services and platforms across On the Beach.

This is a full-stack engineering position with a stronger emphasis on backend engineering, distributed systems and cloud-native architecture.

Our backend engineers solve a wide variety of problems. You could be working on systems responsible for communicating with external travel suppliers, processing large volumes of hotel inventory and pricing information, powering customer search experiences, or ensuring bookings move reliably through complex transactional workflows.

You’ll work across the development lifecycle and collaborate with engineers, product managers and other technical specialists to design, build, deploy and operate reliable software at scale.

What you’ll be doing day to day

• Designing and building scalable backend applications and services

• Developing APIs used by customer-facing applications and internal systems

• Integrating with external suppliers and third-party platforms

• Building systems that process high volumes of requests and data

• Designing distributed and event-driven architectures

• Working with asynchronous messaging and streaming technologies

• Solving problems around performance, latency, resilience and availability

• Improving caching and data-access strategies

• Building reliable transactional workflows

• Developing applications and services within AWS

• Deploying and operating containerised applications

• Improving monitoring, alerting and observability

• Exploring AI-assisted engineering and modern development tooling

At Senior level, you’ll be expected to understand the wider system rather than only the individual service you are working on.

You should be comfortable considering how systems behave in production, identifying failure scenarios and balancing scalability, resilience, maintainability and delivery speed.

We’re looking for strong full-stack engineers whose experience leans towards backend and platform engineering.

You’ll be a great addition to our team if you have the following skills, knowledge and experience

• Strong commercial backend software engineering

• C# and .NET or comparable experience building modern backend applications

• Designing and developing APIs

• Building distributed systems and service-oriented architectures

• Developing cloud-native applications, ideally within AWS

• Working with messaging, asynchronous processing or event-driven architecture

• Designing reliable integrations with external or internal systems

• SQL and/or NoSQL data stores

• Building scalable systems handling significant traffic or data volumes

• Performance optimisation, caching and latency reduction

• Designing for resilience and failure

• Containerisation and orchestration technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes

• Observability, monitoring and operating production systems

• Automated testing and modern engineering practices

We don’t expect candidates to have worked with every technology in our stack. Strong engineering fundamentals and evidence of solving comparable problems at scale are more important than matching every individual tool.

What we’re looking for at Senior level

Beyond the technologies themselves, we’re looking for someone who:

• Can independently solve complex engineering problems

• Thinks about the customer and commercial impact of technical decisions

• Understands the trade-offs between speed, quality and long-term maintainability

• Can contribute meaningfully to technical and architectural discussions

• Communicates clearly with both technical and non-technical colleagues

• Raises engineering standards through collaboration rather than hierarchy

• Helps less experienced engineers develop

• Is comfortable working in an environment where priorities and problems can change quickly

What to expect from our interview process

After a call with our Talent Acquisition Team, we will run a 3 stage interview process all on Microsoft Teams, which will consist of:

• Hiring Manager meet & greet - 30 Minutes
• Behavioural & ways of working - 60 Minutes
• Tech Pairing & System Design - 120 Minutes, broken down into two parts (50 minutes each) with a short break and time for your questions at the end.

We want to make sure everybody has the opportunity to perform at their best. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the interview process please let the Talent Acquisition team know and they will be happy to assist.

Ways of working

Our full time hours are 37.5 per week, but we don't have rigid working hours so you can find the working pattern that's right for you. We have core working hours between 10am - 4pm, so we can collaborate and enjoy the social side of work.

We also have hybrid working so we all work from home and from our Aeroworks office in Manchester City Centre. We operate a remote-first working model, with colleagues meeting in our Manchester office one day every two weeks. Please note that all applicants must be eligible to work full-time in the UK

Our benefits

We might be biased but we think our colleagues are pretty great. They're the people that have made On the Beach what it is today and continue to make it vibrant and successful tomorrow. That's why we offer a competitive benefits package, known as our Beach Perks, to all On the Beach colleagues.

These include:

• 25 days holiday plus your birthday off

• Generous discount on holidays, plus you will receive 2 extra days annual leave on top of your holiday allowance to use whilst you're away on your On the Beach package holiday

• Access to Learnerbly learning platform, plus workshops, courses and professional qualifications

• Enhanced maternity, paternity, shared parental leave and adoption pay, plus other family friendly support

• Employee Assistance Programme and free access to counselling

• Simplyhealth Optimise Health Plan

• Company Sick Pay scheme

• Regular wellbeing events

• Gym discount

• Share Incentive Plan (SIP)

• Death in Service cover

• Onsite subsidised coffee shop

• The Sandbox (our very own bar)

• Food and drink discounts across a number of venues in Manchester City Centre

• Regular social events

• Cycle to Work scheme