Senior Data Engineer

KAYAK; Concord (MA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Work from home up to 20 days/year

No meeting Fridays

Paid parental leave

Generous vacation + birthday leave

Paid volunteer time

Travel discounts

Employee Resource Groups

Retirement and health plans

Job summary

KAYAK, part of Booking Holdings, is seeking a Senior Data Engineer for the Business Intelligence team in Concord, MA. You will build and operate the data backbone, enabling reliable financial and operational reporting and analytics across the organization.

The role focuses on scalable data pipelines, performance optimization, and data reliability, with collaboration across teams. Office presence in Concord, MA is required three days per week.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of proven experience in data engineering or analytics engineering.
• Experience owning end-to-end data pipelines (ingest → transform → test → monitor).
• Strong SQL skills and familiarity with distributed/columnar/OLAP systems (Redshift, Trino, Vertica) and relational databases (e.g., MySQL, Postgres).
• Proficiency in Python and a software-engineering approach to building testable, maintainable code.
• Experience with workflow orchestration and containerization (Airflow, Docker).
• Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills for investigating data issues.
• Strong written and spoken English to communicate effectively across teams.

Responsibilities

• Architect for scale: Develop and monitor robust data pipelines using Python, SQL, and Rundeck/Airflow that handle large-scale data volumes with high reliability.
• Optimize performance: Design performant data models and optimize complex SQL queries for high-scale environments.
• Ensure data reliability: build automated checks and alerts to catch errors early so financial and operational reports remain accurate.
• Increase data access: automate repetitive tasks and build self-service tools to make data easier to use across teams.
• Drive engineering excellence: experiment with and leverage AI-assisted coding tools to accelerate development cycles and enhance code quality.
• Work with partners across the company: translate business questions into practical, maintainable technical solutions.

Skills

SQL

Python

End-to-end pipelines

Airflow

Troubleshooting

English communication

Data modeling

Tools

Redshift

Trino

Vertica

MySQL

Postgres

Docker

Job description

KAYAK, part of Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG), is the world’s 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 at our core 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.

We are looking for a Senior Data Engineer to join our Business Intelligence team.

Our team builds and operates the data backbone that serves as the single source of truth for the organization. We manage KAYAK’s business-critical reporting to support billing and provide the foundation for company-wide reporting and analytics.

If you want to build the systems that define how the business measures success, we’d love to hear from you.

This role will be required to work from our Concord, MA office 3 days per week.

In this role, you will:

• Architect for scale: Develop and monitor robust data pipelines using Python, SQL, and Rundeck/Airflow that handle large-scale data volumes with high reliability.

• Optimize performance: Design performant data models and optimize complex SQL queries for high-scale environments.

• Ensure data reliability: build automated checks and alerts to catch errors early so financial and operational reports remain accurate.

• Increase data access: automate repetitive tasks and build self-service tools to make data easier to use across teams.

• Drive engineering excellence: experiment with and leverage AI-assisted coding tools to accelerate development cycles and enhance code quality.

• Work with partners across the company: translate business questions into practical, maintainable technical solutions.

Please apply if you have:

• 5+ years of proven experience in data engineering or analytics engineering within a related data-centric environment.

• Experience owning end-to-end data pipelines (ingest → transform → test → monitor).

• Strong SQL skills and familiarity with distributed/columnar/OLAP systems (examples: Redshift, Trino, Vertica) and relational databases (e.g., MySQL, Postgres).

• Proficiency in Python and a software-engineering approach to building testable, maintainable code.

• Experience with workflow orchestration and containerization (examples: Airflow, Docker).

• Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills for investigating data issues.

• Strong written and spoken English to communicate effectively across teams.

We welcome diverse technical backgrounds. Nice-to-have experience:

• Stream processing or real-time systems (e.g., Kafka, Flink).

• Modern BI tooling (e.g., Looker, Superset).

• CI/CD and deployment automation (e.g., GitHub Actions).

• Web frameworks for internal tools (e.g., Django, Flask).

Benefits and Perks:

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

• Focus on mental health and well-being:

• No meeting Fridays

• Paid parental leave

• Generous paid vacation + time off for your birthday

• Paid volunteer time

• Focus on your career growth:

• Travel Discounts

• Employee Resource Groups

• Competitive retirement and health plans

• Free lunch 2 days per week

• Fun quarterly events such as boat trips, arcades, ski trips, Thursday happy hours, and more

Compensation

There are a variety of factors that go into determining a salary range, including but not limited to external market benchmark data, geographic location, and years of experience sought/required. The range for this United States located role is $130,000 - 160,000.00 , not inclusive of annual bonus or recurring RSU grants.

We offer a competitive base salary and benefits including: health benefits; flexible spending account; retirement benefits; life insurance; paid time off (including PTO, paid sick leave, medical leave, bereavement leave, floating holidays and paid holidays); and parental leave benefits.

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.

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