Engineering Manager - Indirect Channel (Direct Connect API & Web)

Avis Budget Group•Parsippany-Troy Hills, NJ

23d•$130,000 - $160,000•Onsite

About The Position

Avis Budget Group is seeking a highly experienced Engineering Manager/Lead Architect to provide technical leadership for the architecture, engineering, modernization, and operation of large-scale enterprise applications and API platforms. This role is ideal for a technology leader with 15–17+ years of experience architecting and managing complex, highly distributed enterprise systems, with deep expertise in API-centric architectures, microservices, cloud platforms, GDS (Global Distribution Systems), and legacy modernization. The successful candidate will lead the evolution of Avis Budget Group's technology ecosystem toward a modern, API-first, cloud-native architecture, while ensuring seamless integration with existing mainframe, GDS, reservation, fleet, rental, and enterprise systems. You will operate at the intersection of enterprise architecture, engineering leadership, product delivery, and technology strategy, influencing architectural decisions across multiple engineering organizations and leading teams responsible for business-critical platforms operating at significant scale.

Requirements

15–17+ years of progressive experience in software engineering, architecture, and technology leadership
Significant experience architecting and managing large-scale enterprise applications and distributed platforms
Proven experience leading multiple engineering teams and senior technical resources
Deep expertise in API-first and API-led architecture
Strong experience with API management platforms such as Apigee, 3scale, and RedSwift
Extensive experience designing RESTful APIs, API gateways, API products, and enterprise integration platforms
Strong understanding of GDS architecture and large-scale transaction processing
Extensive experience with Java, Spring Boot, microservices, and distributed systems
Significant hands-on experience with AWS architecture, including CDN/edge delivery and cloud-native services
Experience designing hybrid architectures spanning AWS, on-premises, mainframe, and GDS environments
Strong understanding of event-driven architecture, messaging, Kafka, and asynchronous integration patterns
Experience with enterprise application modernization and legacy/mainframe transformation
Strong knowledge of API security, OAuth2, OIDC, JWT, mTLS, rate limiting, and traffic management
Demonstrated experience with high availability, scalability, performance engineering, and disaster recovery
Strong understanding of DevOps, CI/CD, infrastructure automation, containers, and Kubernetes
Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence senior technical and business stakeholders

Nice To Haves

Experience architecting technology platforms within travel, transportation, mobility, hospitality, airline, rental-car, or similar high-volume transaction environments
Experience with large-scale reservation, availability, pricing, booking, or distribution platforms
Experience with AWS CloudFront and global edge architecture
Experience with Apigee API Management and enterprise API governance
Experience with RedSwift and/or 3scale API management ecosystems
Experience with Kafka and event-streaming architectures
Experience with Kubernetes/OpenShift and containerized enterprise applications
Experience with observability platforms such as Splunk, Dynatrace, Datadog, or equivalent
Experience implementing Domain-Driven Design and enterprise integration patterns
Experience with mainframe technologies including COBOL, CICS, DB2, and JCL
Experience managing large technology transformation programs involving multiple platforms and engineering organizations

Responsibilities

Provide senior technical leadership for the architecture and engineering of large-scale, mission-critical enterprise applications and platforms
Define enterprise application architecture strategies aligned with business objectives, technology roadmaps, and long-term modernization goals
Architect highly available, scalable, resilient, and secure distributed systems supporting high transaction volumes and critical customer journeys
Establish architectural standards and reference architectures for microservices, APIs, event-driven systems, cloud platforms, and enterprise integration
Lead architecture reviews and provide technical direction across multiple engineering teams and technology domains
Translate complex business requirements into scalable technical architectures and actionable engineering roadmaps
Identify architectural risks, technical debt, scalability constraints, and modernization opportunities
Drive technology decisions across build-vs-buy, platform capabilities, integration patterns, and modernization approaches
Own and evolve the enterprise API strategy, establishing APIs as the primary integration mechanism between customer-facing applications, GDS platforms, internal systems, partners, and third-party ecosystems
Architect and govern enterprise-scale API platforms using technologies such as Apigee, 3scale, and RedSwift
Establish standards for API design, governance, versioning, lifecycle management, security, discoverability, throttling, monetization, and observability
Design API products that enable rapid integration across digital channels, mobile applications, GDS platforms, partners, and internal enterprise systems
Define API gateway and management strategies across hybrid cloud, on-premises, and legacy environments
Architect secure API ecosystems using OAuth2, OpenID Connect, JWT, mTLS, rate limiting, API policies, and enterprise identity platforms
Establish API resiliency patterns including throttling, circuit breakers, retries, caching, traffic management, and graceful degradation
Drive API reuse and standardization across engineering organizations to reduce duplication and accelerate delivery
Establish API SLAs, SLOs, performance standards, and operational governance
Provide architectural leadership for Global Distribution System (GDS) capabilities and their integration with modern digital platforms
Design high-volume, low-latency architectures connecting GDS, reservation, rental, availability, pricing, customer, fleet, and partner ecosystems
Lead modernization of GDS and legacy integrations through API-first and event-driven architectures
Architect integration patterns between GDS platforms, mainframe systems, Java microservices, cloud services, and external partners
Evaluate opportunities to decouple tightly coupled legacy capabilities while maintaining business continuity and transactional integrity
Establish scalable integration patterns supporting multiple channels, partners, aggregators, and downstream consumers
Ensure GDS integrations meet enterprise requirements for performance, availability, resiliency, security, and operational support
Lead architecture for high-volume transaction processing where latency, consistency, and availability are critical
Architect and lead modernization of enterprise applications onto AWS using cloud-native and hybrid-cloud patterns
Design highly available architectures leveraging AWS services across compute, networking, storage, messaging, security, and observability
Establish AWS CDN and edge delivery strategies to improve performance, availability, and scalability for customer-facing applications and APIs
Architect global traffic management, caching, edge routing, load balancing, and content delivery strategies
Design solutions using technologies such as Amazon CloudFront, API Gateway, ECS/EKS, Lambda, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, SQS/SNS, and other appropriate AWS services
Establish cloud architecture standards covering security, networking, identity, resiliency, cost optimization, and operational excellence
Lead hybrid-cloud integration between AWS, enterprise data centers, mainframe environments, and GDS platforms
Ensure cloud platforms are designed for enterprise-scale availability, disaster recovery, observability, and performance
Lead the transformation of monolithic and legacy applications into domain-aligned microservices and distributed systems
Define service boundaries using domain-driven design and enterprise architecture principles
Establish patterns for synchronous and asynchronous communication across distributed services
Drive adoption of event-driven architecture using technologies such as Kafka, messaging platforms, and cloud-native event services
Ensure microservices are independently deployable, observable, scalable, and resilient
Define strategies for distributed transactions, eventual consistency, idempotency, service discovery, configuration management, and fault tolerance
Establish engineering standards for Java/Spring Boot-based services and other appropriate technology stacks
Lead architecture and modernization initiatives spanning mainframe, GDS, Java, APIs, and cloud platforms
Develop pragmatic modernization strategies that preserve critical business capabilities while reducing legacy dependencies
Establish API façade and strangler-pattern approaches for progressively modernizing legacy applications
Identify capabilities that should be exposed through APIs, migrated to microservices, or retained within existing systems of record
Ensure modernization initiatives maintain transactional integrity, business continuity, and operational stability
Lead and manage multiple engineering teams and technical leads responsible for enterprise platforms and applications
Build a culture of engineering excellence, accountability, innovation, and continuous improvement
Mentor senior engineers, architects, and engineering managers
Establish engineering career development, technical growth, and succession strategies
Partner with Product, Enterprise Architecture, Infrastructure, Security, Data, DevOps, and business stakeholders
Manage complex technical programs involving multiple teams, systems, vendors, and organizational dependencies
Establish effective engineering operating models across geographically distributed teams
Drive Agile delivery while maintaining appropriate architecture governance and technical quality
Balance short-term delivery requirements with long-term platform sustainability and modernization
Architect systems capable of supporting enterprise-scale transaction volumes and customer traffic
Establish reliability engineering practices covering availability, resiliency, disaster recovery, and capacity planning
Define performance engineering strategies for APIs, GDS integrations, microservices, and customer-facing applications
Establish enterprise observability across APIs and distributed applications using metrics, logging, tracing, and real-time monitoring
Define SLOs, SLIs, operational KPIs, and production readiness standards
Lead architecture and engineering responses to complex production incidents and systemic reliability issues
Drive proactive capacity planning, performance testing, chaos/resiliency testing, and operational readiness
Establish enterprise security architecture for APIs, microservices, cloud applications, and partner integrations
Ensure APIs comply with enterprise authentication, authorization, encryption, data protection, and audit requirements
Establish API security policies across Apigee, 3scale, RedSwift, and related API management platforms
Partner with Cybersecurity and Enterprise Architecture teams to implement Zero Trust and defense-in-depth principles
Ensure security is integrated throughout the software development lifecycle