Senior Engineering Manager, K4B

Kayak; United States; On-site; USD 148,435 - 205,525; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Travel Discounts

Free lunch 2 days per week

Bike leasing program

Office in Friedrichshain, Berlin

Company-paid therapy sessions

Job summary

KAYAK is seeking a Senior Engineering Leader to drive end-to-end delivery for multiple agile squads. You will define technical roadmaps, enforce best practices, and lead hiring and growth for a team focused on scalable backend services and data-driven initiatives.

The role involves cross-functional collaboration, architecture influence, and building a high-velocity, quality-driven engineering culture at our Berlin hub.

Qualifications

• 3+ years leading engineering teams within travel industry or similar content integrations.
• 10+ years software engineering with at least 5 years in leadership.
• Data-driven with ownership and innovation mindset.
• Experience transforming organizations with agile methodologies.
• Strong fundamentals in distributed systems and backend service architecture.
• Experience owning the full people management lifecycle (hiring, onboarding, reviews).
• Proven ability to coach engineers at multiple levels and give structured feedback.
• Solid understanding of agile delivery, CI/CD, testing, observability.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management; able to present technical vision.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end delivery for agile engineering teams, shipping high-quality software aligned with objectives.
• Define and drive the technical roadmap for the team's domain with PMs and leaders.
• Design and enforce engineering best practices and Definition of Done.
• Lead hiring and performance management for the team; manage lifecycle from sourcing to promotions.
• Coach engineers at all levels through 1:1s and career conversations.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with PMs, designers, and other managers to plan multi-team initiatives.
• Identify and remove delivery risks and drive improvements.
• Champion quality culture with blameless post-mortems and incident response.
• Influence architecture across the domain; participate in design reviews.
• Support engineering hub expansion and local talent acquisition.

Skills

Leadership

Delivery management

Agile

Hiring & coaching

Communication

Distributed systems

API design

Backend architecture

CI/CD

Observability

Eng leadership

Education

Bachelor’s in CS or related

Tools

GitHub

Jira

Logging/Observability tools

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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