Software Engineer, Flights

Job description

**This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Software Engineer, Flights based in Ireland.** We are looking for an experienced backend engineer to help scale a live flight technology product into robust, high-performance infrastructure for the global travel industry. You will join a small, hands-on engineering team working on complex challenges across flight search, booking, servicing, and airline connectivity. Your work will directly shape API design, caching strategies, data models, and system reliability, with significant ownership and room to make technical decisions. You will help build intuitive, low-code APIs that enable fintechs, travel platforms, and other businesses to launch flight products without needing deep airline expertise. This is an opportunity to work in a technically demanding domain, contribute to a rapidly evolving product, and influence the next generation of travel infrastructure. ### Accountabilities - Help scale and evolve the existing flight product from an established production service into reliable, flexible infrastructure that partners can confidently build upon. - Design, develop, and maintain high-quality backend services and APIs that simplify access to flight search, booking, and post-booking functionality. - Make key technical decisions involving API architecture, caching strategies, data models, performance, and system reliability. - Develop efficient caching approaches for flight offers while balancing speed, cost, price accuracy, and availability freshness. - Build and improve booking servicing capabilities, ensuring changes, cancellations, refunds, and other post-booking operations flow consistently across airlines and suppliers. - Support modern airline retailing standards, including New Distribution Capability (NDC) and offer-and-order-based retailing models, while integrating with existing Global Distribution System (GDS) workflows. - Design intuitive, scalable APIs that allow partners such as fintechs, travel platforms, and super-apps to launch flight products without needing extensive airline domain knowledge. - Work closely with a small engineering team, taking ownership of technical solutions and delivering improvements directly into production. - Contribute to the performance, scalability, and resilience of high-traffic systems in a fast-moving, low-process environment. ### Requirements: - At least 8 years of professional software development experience, with deep expertise in backend engineering and API development. - Previous experience in the flight travel domain, such as working for an online travel agency (OTA), airline, GDS provider, distributor, or flight booking platform. - Strong understanding of the end-to-end flight booking lifecycle, including search, booking, and post-booking servicing. - Hands-on experience with New Distribution Capability (NDC) is required. - Practical, recent experience developing with Python in production environments, even if your primary language is another object-oriented language such as Java, Go, or Kotlin. - Strong API design skills and the ability to build scalable, reliable services that simplify complex integrations. - Experience working with distributed systems, caching, and high-volume backend workloads. - A hands-on individual contributor mindset, with a preference for technical ownership rather than people management. - Ability to work independently, make sound technical decisions, and deliver results in an environment with limited process and evolving requirements. - Strong problem-solving skills and an interest in tackling complex technical challenges. - Comfortable working remotely from Europe and collaborating effectively within European time zones. **Additional experience that would be an advantage:** - Developer-level experience with AWS. - Experience with booking servicing and post-booking workflows. - Familiarity with GDS integrations such as Amadeus, Sabre, or Travelport. - Experience building and operating high-traffic systems. - Knowledge of FastAPI, Redis, and relational databases. ### Benefits: - Remote-first working arrangements across Europe. - Hybrid working option in Barcelona, Dublin, London, or Palma. - Opportunity to take meaningful technical ownership in a small, growing engineering team. - Ability to influence the architecture and evolution of a live flight infrastructure product. - Exposure to challenging technical problems in airline retailing, travel APIs, and booking systems. - Opportunity to contribute to technology used by major travel companies, fintechs, and global platforms. - Autonomy over how you organize your work within a results-oriented and supportive team. - Opportunity to work in a fast-growing, globally distributed technology environment.