Staff Software Engineer - Resiliency and Platform Engineering

Choice Hotels International

Scottsdale (AZ)

Hybrid

USD 150,000 - 190,000

Full time

14 days+

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Benefits offered by this job

Medical coverage

Dental coverage

Vision coverage

Paid time off

Retirement benefits

Employee recognition

Hotel discounts

Job summary

Choice Hotels International is seeking a Staff Software Engineer in Scottsdale to strengthen resiliency and platform engineering across a large-scale SaaS system. You will design platform libraries, tooling, and guardrails to improve reliability, observability, and developer experience in a cloud‑native environment.

The role emphasizes systemic improvements over feature delivery, with collaboration across architects, engineers, and managers to drive durable resiliency initiatives.

Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience building and operating production systems.
Typically 8–10+ years designing, building, and supporting large‑scale software in production.
Hands‑on experience with Java/Spring Boot services in virtualized and containerized environments.
Experience with cloud-native/serverless workloads (Python) and event‑driven architectures.
Strong AWS experience and understanding of managed services and reliability.
Knowledge of data persistence, availability, and failure modes across storage types.
Experience with observability platforms and telemetry tools (AppDynamics, OpenSearch, CloudWatch).
Familiarity with SRE principles and applying them to platform resiliency and reliability.

Responsibilities

Design and implement platform-level capabilities (libraries, frameworks, tooling) to improve resiliency and developer experience.
Strengthen runtime behavior by addressing systemic failure modes and error handling improvements.
Define standards for logging, monitoring, and observability to improve signal quality and reduce noise.
Collaborate with Senior engineers, architects, and engineering managers to scope platform initiatives.
Work across resiliency, data resiliency, and platform teams to raise technical bar and share solutions.
Engage in codebases to understand real‑world behavior and validate resiliency improvements.
Participate in incident postmortems and translate lessons into durable platform changes.
Evaluate and prototype tools that measurably improve productivity and safety for development teams.

Skills

Java & Spring Boot

Cloud-native & serverless

AWS

Observability & monitoring

Databases (RDBMS & NoSQL)

SRE principles

Platform engineering

AI-assisted tools

Technical leadership

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

AppDynamics

OpenSearch

Amazon CloudWatch

Job description

This role is not eligible for sponsorship and is a four days onsite hybrid at our Northern Scottsdale office. Choice Hotels has an exciting new opportunity as our Staff Software Engineer, Resiliency & Platform Engineering in the SkyTouch Technology division. SkyTouch Technology is an independently operated division of Choice Hotels that provides the most widely used cloud-based (SaaS) hotel property management system. As a key member of our division, you will help strengthen the resiliency, safety, and operability of a large‑scale, multi‑tenant SaaS platform by improving foundational platform capabilities, runtime behavior, and the developer experience used to build and operate our systems.

Your Responsibilities

Important note: This role writes production code, but not for feature delivery. Coding is focused on platform-level resiliency, developer enablement, observability, and systemic improvements rather than customer‑facing feature enhancements.

Design and implement platform-level capabilities including shared libraries, frameworks, tooling, automation, and guardrails that improve application resiliency, runtime safety, and developer experience across the ecosystem, favoring leverage and durability over short‑term delivery.
Strengthen foundational platform and runtime behavior by identifying and eliminating systemic failure modes such as JVM memory leaks, unsafe defaults, brittle error handling, poor failure propagation, and resource exhaustion.
Improve how software is built and operated at scale by defining and rolling out developer‑facing standards and paved roads for resiliency, observability, error handling, and operational readiness.
Define, standardize, and evolve logging, monitoring, alerting, and observability practices that improve signal quality, reduce noise, and enable faster diagnosis and recovery.
Partner closely with Principal Software Engineers, Solution Architects, and Engineering Managers to identify systemic risks and translate them into well‑scoped platform and resiliency initiatives and technical work.
Operate across software engineering resiliency, data engineering resiliency, and platform engineering teams to identify cross‑cutting risks, design shared solutions, and raise the technical bar, rather than owning individual team backlogs.
Engage directly in application codebases, particularly during ramp‑up, to understand real‑world system behavior, identify failure patterns, and validate resiliency improvements. Exit application‑level work once learning is complete and systemic improvements are identified.
Participate in incident postmortems and operational reviews to identify recurring patterns and ensure lessons learned are translated into durable platform or resiliency improvements, not one‑off fixes.
Evaluate, prototype, and introduce tools and technologies that measurably improve developer productivity, platform safety, and application resiliency, prioritizing adoption, simplicity, and long‑term impact.
Apply AI‑assisted development, diagnostics, and operational tools where they demonstrably improve engineering productivity, root cause analysis, signal quality, or resiliency outcomes.
Influence engineering practices and technical direction through design reviews, reference implementations, mentorship, and technical leadership rather than formal authority or delivery ownership.

Your Experience, Skills & Competencies

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience building and operating production systems.
Typically, 8–10+ years of hands‑on experience designing, building, and supporting large‑scale software systems in production environments.
Hands‑on experience designing, building, and operating Java‑based services, including Spring Boot applications running in virtualized and containerized environments.
Experience developing and supporting cloud‑native and serverless workloads, including Python‑based services and event‑driven architectures.
Strong practical experience working in AWS public cloud environments, with an understanding of how cloud‑managed services influence reliability, scalability, and operational behavior.
Working knowledge of relational and non‑relational data stores, including how data persistence, availability, and failure characteristics impact system design and resiliency.
Experience using application monitoring and observability platforms to understand system behavior in production, such as application performance monitoring, centralized logging, and cloud‑native telemetry tools (for example, AppDynamics, OpenSearch, Amazon CloudWatch, or similar).
Comfortable diagnosing complex production issues by interpreting metrics, logs, traces, and runtime signals rather than relying solely on reactive incident handling.
Solid understanding of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles, with the judgment to apply them selectively to guide platform and resiliency improvements rather than adopting SRE practices as a one‑size‑fits‑all operating model.
Demonstrated ability to choose between software design changes, platform capabilities, or developer enablement as the most effective way to improve reliability and operability.
Hands‑on experience designing and delivering one or more platform‑level capabilities such as shared libraries, frameworks, internal tooling, or enablement platforms used by multiple application teams.
Experience creating and rolling out paved roads, guardrails, or standardized patterns that balance safety, usability, and developer autonomy.
Experience using AI‑assisted tools (such as code assistants, log/trace analysis, or incident analysis tools) to improve engineering effectiveness or system reliability.
Proven ability to influence technical direction and engineering practices across teams without direct ownership of delivery backlogs.
Cloud or technology certifications (such as AWS certifications or equivalent) are a plus and demonstrate commitment to building and operating reliable systems at scale.
Successful candidates for this role consistently demonstrate strength in the following Korn Ferry competencies:

Manages Complexity – Navigates complex technical environments, synthesizes information across systems, and identifies systemic root causes.
Decision Quality – Makes sound technical decisions under constraints, balancing immediate needs with long‑term platform health.
Drives Results – Delivers durable improvements in platform resiliency, stability, and developer effectiveness.

Your Team

This is an individual contributor role that will report to the Manager, Resiliency and Platform Engineering. You will work across software engineering resiliency, data engineering resiliency, and platform engineering teams, collaborating closely with Principal Software Engineers, Solution Architects, Engineering Managers, and application teams across SkyTouch Technology.

This role is not eligible for sponsorship.

Benefits

Choice prioritizes our associate wellbeing by offering a comprehensive benefits program that is both competitive and flexible to help you achieve your wellbeing goals.

Competitive compensation and benefits, including medical, dental, and vision coverage
Leave and paid time‑off for holidays, vacation, personal, family, volunteer, sick, jury duty, bereavement, military, and religious observance
Financial benefits for retirement and health savings
Employee recognition programs
Discounts at Choice hotels worldwide

About Choice

Choice Hotels International, Inc. (NYSE: CHH), is one of the largest lodging franchisors in the world. With 7,500 hotels in 45+ countries and territories, we offer a range of high‑quality lodging options in the upper upscale, upper midscale, midscale, extended stay, and economy segments. We’re the hotel company for those who choose to bet on themselves — the striver, the dreamer, the entrepreneur — because that’s who we are, too.

At Choice, we are united by the simple belief that tomorrow will be even better than today — for associates, our company, and our franchisees. At our worldwide corporate headquarters in North Bethesda, Maryland, our technology center in Scottsdale, Arizona, and through our associates around the globe, every voice is heard and every idea is listened to, no matter what area of the company they come from. We are united in supporting the entrepreneurial dreams of our thousands of franchise owners, which propels us forward — giving our work at Choice a purpose larger than our business.

Our Corporate Office Locations

North Bethesda, MD — Located at Pike & Rose, our worldwide headquarters is less than 15 miles from Washington, D.C., one block away from the North Bethesda Metro station, with easy access to I‑495, complimentary parking, electronic charging stations, restaurants and retail.
Scottsdale, AZ — Located at the northwest corner of Loop 101, the Scottsdale office is home to our technology, eCommerce and customer service organizations, with easy access to complimentary parking, electronic charging stations, restaurants and retail.
Minneapolis, MN — Select roles are based in our Minneapolis office on Highway 394, near the intersection with Highway 100, only five minutes from downtown.
Field/Remote — Select roles designated as field/remote will require associates to work from a home office, connecting virtually with Choice team members and leadership on Zoom, with possible required travel depending on the role.

Choice’s Cultural Values