Staff Software Engineer, Meta AI

KAYAK•Concord, MA

7d•$160,000 - $180,000•Hybrid

About The Position

KAYAK, part of Booking Holdings, is a leading travel search engine. With billions of queries across our platforms, we help people find their perfect flight, stay, rental car and vacation package. We’re also transforming business travel with a new corporate travel solution, KAYAK for Business. As an employee of KAYAK, you will be an essential part of a high powered team that keeps all of this running smoothly – helping millions of people find the best hotels and the best ways to fly from A to B every day! This role requires commuting to the Concord, MA office 3 times a week.

Requirements

Experience building and maintaining production software.
Proficiency in Java or another relevant programming language.
Familiarity with APIs, data structures and software-design principles.
Experience testing software and investigating defects or production issues.
The ability to explain technical decisions clearly in writing and conversation.
The ability to take ownership of assigned work while asking for input or support when needed.
Experience contributing to projects from design through implementation, release and maintenance.
Equivalent practical experience is welcome in place of a specific degree or educational path.

Nice To Haves

Experience with distributed systems, search, personalization or other high-volume consumer products.
Experience with AI, machine learning or large language model applications.
Experience with relational databases or other structured data stores.
Experience working on web products, mobile products or travel-related products.
Experience improving accessibility, reliability or usability.
Experience working with Java and Spring.
Experience with cloud services, CI/CD pipelines and automated testing frameworks.

Responsibilities

Design, implement and maintain reliable production software for KAYAK’s travel-search and trip-planning experiences.
Build and evolve APIs and services supporting AI-assisted search, conversational travel planning, itineraries and related user experiences.
Investigate technical problems, assess trade-offs and choose practical solutions that improve reliability, performance and maintainability.
Write automated tests and contribute to quality across unit, integration and end-to-end testing.
Participate in code reviews and technical discussions, providing constructive feedback focused on correctness, clarity and maintainability.
Work with engineers, product managers and designers to clarify requirements and deliver useful, accessible user experiences.
Contribute to features such as ASK AI, smart filters, AI-generated hotel review summaries, Explore and related search experiences.
Help make AI-assisted features dependable, transparent and useful to travelers.
Learn unfamiliar systems and share knowledge with teammates through documentation, pairing and technical discussions.
Monitor and improve production behavior through effective debugging, observability and root-cause analysis.
Contribute to the evolution of development tools, engineering processes and delivery practices.

Benefits

Work from (almost) anywhere for up to 20 days per year
Company-paid therapy sessions through SpringHealth
Company-paid subscription to HeadSpace
Company-wide week off a year
No meeting Fridays
Paid parental leave
Generous paid vacation + time off for your birthday
Paid volunteer time
Development Dollars
Leadership development
Access to thousands of on-demand e-learnings
Travel Discounts
Employee Resource Groups
Competitive retirement and health plans
Free lunch 2 days per week
Fun quarterly events such as boat trips, arcades, ski trips, Thursday happy hours, and more
health benefits
flexible spending account
retirement benefits
life insurance
paid time off (including PTO, paid sick leave, medical leave, bereavement leave, floating holidays and paid holidays)
parental leave benefits