Staff Backend Software Engineer - Commerce Foundations (100% Remote - USA)

Hopper•New York, NY

2d•Remote

About The Position

Did you know Hopper technology powers some of the largest travel portals in the world? Our Hopper Technology Solutions (HTS) platform drives travel purchases for major global brands from banks to airlines to fintech leaders. This platform is essentially a configurable, multi-tenant travel commerce engine, enabling partners to launch world-class hotel and travel booking experiences faster, with less custom engineering. The Commerce Foundations team is the core of this engine. While our product teams focus on the "what," Foundations focuses on the "how." We build scalable, resilient, and extensible systems—booking flows, search orchestration, checkout journeys, and platform capabilities—that power Stays and Packages across multiple partner portals worldwide. As a Staff Engineer, you aren't just building features; you are architecting the foundational patterns that allow our entire engineering org to scale. You will work as a technical leader within a cross-functional team of exceptional engineers, designers, and product managers to ensure our commerce engine is world-class.

Requirements

Technical Fearlessness: A natural drive to fearlessly deep dive into an unknown, complex code base to untangle logic and implement elegant abstractions while keeping eyes on the goal to deliver results fast.
Foundational Product Thinking: Strong product thinking: your conception of quality is anchored in the customer, but you understand that a great experience is built on a stable, predictable commerce engine.
Mastery of Distributed Systems: Deep experience with (or a proven ability to rapidly master) distributed system development in Scala. You understand the trade-offs of consistency, availability, and latency in a global environment.
Multi-Tenant Mindset: You prioritize "configuration over customization," building modular systems that support N partners with minimal manual intervention.
Pragmatic Vision: You can distinguish between what has to be right from the start and what can be iterated on, balancing long-term health with the need for speed.

Responsibilities

Architectural Strategy: Move beyond individual features to design the underlying patterns for booking flows, checkout journeys, and multi-tenant configurations.
Technical Stewardship: Define the "North Star" for our Scala-based distributed systems, ensuring our move toward global scale is met with robust, maintainable patterns.
Multi-Tenant Excellence: Lead the evolution of our platform to support "configuration over customization," allowing partners to launch world-class experiences with zero-touch engineering.
Mentorship & Influence: Raise the bar for the entire engineering org by conducting deep-dive design reviews, mentoring senior engineers, and fostering a culture of high-ownership and asynchronous decision-making.
Architectural Sovereignty: Lead the design, build, and operate API and full-stack solutions that serve as the "source of truth" for Stays and Packages across all HTS partners.
Systemic Improvement: Proactively explore and resolve engineering improvements for the team and the product—identifying bottlenecks in the codebase or infrastructure that hinder scale.
High-Alignment Leadership: Operate with extreme autonomy, working closely with fellow engineers, designers, and PMs to ensure high alignment on complex technical roadmaps without the need for constant meetings.
Cross-Functional Influence: Collaborate cross-functionally with the product team, other Hopper teams, and external partner teams to ensure foundational logic is robust and extensible.
Asynchronous Excellence: Drive decision-making through high-quality documentation and asynchronous communication, thriving in our low-meeting, high-alignment culture.

Benefits

Well-funded and proven startup with large ambitions, competitive salary and the upsides of pre-IPO equity packages.
Unlimited PTO.
Carrot Cash travel stipend.
Access to co-working space on demand through FlexDesk AND Work-from-home stipend.
Please ask us about our very generous parental leave, much above industry standards!.
Entrepreneurial culture where pushing limits and taking risks is everyday business.
Open communication with management and company leadership.
Small, dynamic teams = massive impact.
100% employer paid Medical, Dental and Vision coverage for employees.
Access to Disability & Life insurance.
Health Reimbursement Account (HRA).
DCA/ FSA and access to 401k plan.