Senior Software Engineer - Boston

Job description

About Us Perk (formerly TravelPerk) is the intelligent platform for travel and spend management. Built to tackle the time-consuming, manual work that gets in the way of real work, our tools automate everything from travel bookings to expenses, invoice processing, and more. By eliminating this shadow work that wastes hours, erodes morale, and saps innovation, we're on a mission to power real work, with real impact. We're trusted by more than 12,000 companies worldwide, including On Running, Breitling, and Fabletics, and we're tackling the 7 hours of lost productivity per employee each week, a $1.7 trillion problem https://www.perk.com/shadow-work-report. Founded in 2015, Perk has grown into a global company of more than 1,800 people across 12 offices globally, with headquarters in London and Boston. We combine innovation, control, and simplicity to transform how businesses work and how people feel at work. At Perk, we're driven by our values, like being an owner, delivering a 7-star experience, and working as one team. We value curiosity, purpose, and mindset, not just knowledge, to unlock the power in your potential. Our talent team brings together leading minds from the travel, fintech, and SaaS industries, representing over 70 countries. If you're excited about having a real impact and shaping how millions of people experience work, we'd love you on the team. Visit www.perk.com http://www.perk.com to learn more. Perk is growing its engineering footprint in North America, and we're looking for a Senior Software Engineer to help us do it right. You'll play a central role in a new product launch as Perk continues its expansion - a rare chance to shape something from the ground up. HOW WE WORK: At Perk, we believe the best work happens when great people come together in small teams, with a shared sense of purpose. You'll join a cross-functional squad where you have real ownership of a piece of Perk’s domains, a genuine say in what gets built, and the autonomy to make it happen. Each team to decide how to contribute to Perk’s company goals. We care about impact, and we trust our people to deliver it. WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A SENIOR ENGINEER AT PERK: - Shape the bigger picture. You won't just build features, you'll refine the what to build and why. At Perk, senior engineers are expected to go beyond the technical solution and focus on the problem itself. You'll contribute to your squad's quarterly goals and long-term vision alongside your Product Manager and Engineering Manager. - Architect for today and tomorrow. When a big change is needed in how our platform works, you'll be the one writing the design documents that lay the foundation. You'll become a guardian of your team's technical quality; spotting areas of investment, proactively managing technical debt, and making sure we don't let "busy work" crowd out the work that truly matters. At Perk, we believe in impact over effort: our customers see results, not the hours behind them. Your job is to make sure we're always investing our energy where it counts most. - Lead across boundaries. Your influence won't stop at your own squad. You'll communicate complex ideas across multiple teams, proactively identify who needs to be involved, and drive alignment across the broader organisation. Whether it's coordinating a cross-squad initiative, contributing to one of our engineering guilds (where engineers from different teams align on shared technical topics), or pairing with architects on solution discovery, you'll operate comfortably beyond your immediate team. - Raise the bar for everyone around you. Senior engineers at Perk are mentors, coaches, and bar raisers. You'll support less experienced colleagues through direct mentorship, thoughtful feedback during reviews, and by modelling what great engineering looks like in practice. You'll help Engineering Managers understand where the team needs to grow technically, and you'll use spaces like guild meetings, design doc reviews, and pairing sessions to lift the overall standard. At Perk, we are a team, the team's success is your success. DESIRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE: - Product Leadership: Translates complex business goals into technical roadmaps; de-risks ambiguous projects through spikes and prototyping. - System Architecture: Architects scalable, evolvable systems and data models that account for performance, failure isolation, and long-term maintenance. - Technical Standards: Defines and upholds engineering excellence, including CI/CD optimizations, testing strategies, and coding standards across the stack. - Frontend Strategy: Establishes frontend architecture patterns, including state management, performance budgets, and comprehensive testing (e.g., E2E/Cypress). - Backend Excellence: Engineers sophisticated backend solutions involving API versioning, caching strategies, and complex data migration plans. - Operational Maturity: Leads observability and SRE practices; defines SLOs, manages incident responses, and conducts blameless post-mortems. - Security & Risk: Oversees operational security, including secrets hygiene and dependency risk management, to ensure a hardened production environment. - Mentorship & Influence: Levels up the engineering organization through active mentorship, leading design reviews, and influencing the product roadmap with technical data. - Cross-Functional Impact: Coordinates multi-team deliverables and aligns stakeholders to resolve technical blockers across the organization. What we offer: - Receive competitive compensation and equity ownership in Perk - Rest and recharge with our generous allocation of 20 vacation days and 12 public holidays - Enjoy the flexibility of three medical plans to choose from, with company contributions and an HSA when enrolling in an HDHP medical plan - Take control of your physical health with additional comprehensive benefit plans, covering dental, vision and Wellhub’s gym subscription from your start date - Rest assured that you’re covered by life and disability policies from your start date, with options to add extra protection through voluntary buy-up plans - Plan for your future with our 401(k) plan with company matching contributions - Care for your furry friends through partner discounts on pet insurance - Join our unforgettable Perk events, including our spectacular annual summer party - Always feel supported with Spring Health, our market-leading wellbeing partner, providing fast, comprehensive access to 12x therapy and 12x coaching sessions for you and your loved ones - Focus on your family with 12-16 weeks’ paid parental leave - Contribute to your community with 16 paid hours per year to spend volunteering for your dearest charitable causes - Broaden your horizons with up to 20 "Work from Anywhere" days per year - Follow your passions and take a four-week, fully paid sabbatical once you reach 5 years - Let us help you move to one of our hubs with relocation support Compensation: Compensation for this role is a combination of salary and stock options. The anticipated base salary range is $140,000 - $180,000 per year. Actual compensation may vary based on specific qualifications, experience, and other job-related factors. AI AT PERK: - AI is embedded in how we work and what we build. It spans the whole workflow: our Notion, Jira, GitHub and Slack are AI-connected so you get up to speed fast, and day-to-day it helps with specifying features, writing and reviewing code, and automated AI PR review on every pull request. When something goes wrong in production, AI surfaces context across systems quickly. We also embrace agentic coding, using AI as an active collaborator, not just a prompt-by-prompt co-pilot. - We expect candidates to use AI tools in our coding interviews. The bar is understanding your code and owning what you produce. That reflects how we work every day. How We Work At Perk, we take an IRL-first approach to work, where our team works together in-person 3 days a week. As such, this role requires you to be based within commuting distance of our hubs. We fundamentally believe in the value of meeting in real life to improve connectivity, productivity, creativity and ultimately making us a great place to work. For certain roles, we can help with relocation from anywhere in the world, English is the official language at the office. Please submit your resume in English if you choose to apply. Do not forget to submit an updated portfolio and/or resume. Perk is a global company with a diverse customer base, and we want to make sure the people behind our product reflect that. We’re an equal opportunity employer, which means you’re welcome at Perk regardless of how you look, where you’re from, or anything else that makes you, well, you. Protect Yourself from Recruitment Scams All official communication from Perk will always come from email addresses ending in @perk.com http://perk.com or @externalperk.com http://externalperk.com, our verified social media channels, or recruiters listed on our official LinkedIn page. We will never ask you to pay for equipment, training, or fees, request sensitive personal information such as bank details early in the process, or communicate through unofficial apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal. If you receive a message claiming to be from Perk that seems suspicious, please do not respond. Forward it to security [at] perk .com, and we will confirm whether it is legitimate. #LI-Hybrid