Staff Software Engineer, Backend - Booking Platform & APIs in Albany

We are seeking a hands-on Staff Software Engineer to lead the architecture and development of a booking platform and external API connecting partners and authorized AI agents to real-world hotel experiences.

In this high-impact individual contributor role, you will own the technical direction of the booking domain, from live pricing and availability to reservations, modifications, and cancellations. You will design reliable, scalable systems that handle complex transactions and real-world failure scenarios while enabling new distribution partners and business categories.

You will report to the Head of Engineering, collaborate with senior technical leadership, and establish the engineering patterns that enable other developers to build integrations and expand the platform. This is a role for an engineer who combines strong architectural judgment with a willingness to write production code and take responsibility for what they build.

What You’ll Do

• Lead booking platform development: Design, build, and evolve a stable, versioned API supporting pricing, availability, reservation holds, bookings, modifications, and cancellations.
• Ensure transactional reliability: Build safeguards for duplicate requests, concurrent transactions, timeouts, retries, partial failures, and reconciliation.
• Own domain architecture: Establish clear data models and business rules for products, inventory, pricing, schedules, holds, and bookings.
• Build scalable integrations: Develop reusable patterns for supply partners and property management and point-of-sale systems, enabling engineers to onboard new partners efficiently.
• Drive architectural decisions: Own the booking domain’s technical roadmap, lead design reviews, guide migrations, and partner with engineering leadership on broader platform decisions.
• Improve production reliability: Establish service-level targets and implement automated testing, monitoring, tracing, alerting, dashboards, and operational documentation.
• Enable platform expansion: Design reusable capabilities that support additional booking categories without requiring entirely separate systems.
• Raise engineering standards: Mentor engineers, communicate technical tradeoffs, and promote sound practices in API design, testing, maintainability, and safe deployments.

• Typically 8+ years of software engineering experience, or equivalent demonstrated technical impact.
• Proven ownership of production systems involving bookings, payments, orders, reservations, inventory, or other transaction-sensitive workflows.
• Experience designing external APIs, integration platforms, or distributed backend systems used by other teams or external partners.
• Strong understanding of relational data modeling, concurrency, consistency, asynchronous processing, and distributed-system failure modes.
• Demonstrated ability to establish technical direction across engineers or teams and influence architectural decisions beyond individual assignments.
• Experience evolving complex production systems safely, with attention to reliability, observability, testing, and data integrity.
• Ability to lead as a primary technical contributor while collaborating effectively with Product, Partnerships, Operations, and engineering leadership.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to explain architectural decisions, tradeoffs, and measurable outcomes.

Technology Environment

Our current technology stack includes:

• Backend: Ruby on Rails, Node.js
• Databases: PostgreSQL, MongoDB
• Search: OpenSearch
• APIs and integrations: REST, OpenAPI, webhooks
• Cloud and observability: AWS, Datadog
• Testing: RSpec, Playwright

Ruby on Rails experience is welcome but not required. We value transferable backend expertise, sound engineering judgment, and a proven record of delivering reliable production systems over experience with a specific technology or industry.

Within your first 6-12 months, you will help establish a reliable, reusable booking API that supports multiple distribution partners and authorized AI agents. You will improve the correctness and resilience of the booking lifecycle, reduce integration effort through standardized contracts and connector patterns, and help extend the shared booking model into new business categories.

Why Consider This Opportunity?

• Meaningful technical ownership: Lead a critical platform initiative with direct influence over architecture and the engineering roadmap.
• Hands-on Staff-level impact: Shape technical direction while remaining actively involved in design, implementation, and production operations.
• Complex engineering challenges: Solve real-world problems involving transactional integrity, distributed systems, API design, and partner integrations.
• Competitive compensation: Earn a base salary of $220,000-$240,000 annually, plus equity, with potential flexibility for exceptional candidates.
• Collaborative engineering culture: Work closely with senior technical leaders and cross-functional partners to build foundational capabilities.

Work Arrangement

This position is based at our Flatiron District office in New York City and requires working in the office four days per week.