Senior Engineering Manager, Platform Team

About the role

KAYAK is looking for a Senior Engineering Manager to lead the Backend Platform team. You will guide a group of senior engineers and principals in modernising core infrastructure, standardising Java architecture, and improving deployment and observability across the company.

Key responsibilities

• Lead, mentor and develop senior backend engineers and principals, providing technical guidance and career support.
• Own the technical roadmap for the platform, aligning priorities with broader engineering strategy.
• Drive adoption of modern backend infrastructure practices to boost reliability, scalability and developer velocity.
• Champion architecture decisions, lead design reviews and collaborate with technical leaders across engineering.
• Set and enforce best practices for coding, testing, code coverage and deployment quality.
• Manage day‑to‑day operations, remove blockers, balance backlog and maintain high standards for reliability and security.
• Collaborate with other engineering managers and cross‑functional stakeholders to resolve dependencies and support product teams.
• Monitor team health and delivery metrics, identify risks early and adjust priorities as needed.
• Recruit and onboard new backend talent to support the platform roadmap.

Required profile

• 8+ years of backend or platform software development experience, with strong knowledge of distributed systems and service architecture.
• Proven experience leading or managing senior backend engineers, with a track record in performance management, coaching and team development.
• Hands‑on experience with Kubernetes and cloud‑native infrastructure.
• Solid understanding of modern CI/CD practices, deployment quality, release engineering and operating production systems.

Required skills

• Java
• Kubernetes
• Cloud‑native infrastructure
• CI/CD
• Distributed systems
• Service architecture