Principal Engineer - Search in Manchester

We're On the Beach! Since 2003, we've been rewriting the rules of how people discover, book, and experience their perfect getaway. What started as connecting people to short-haul beach holidays has evolved into something much bigger - premium beach destinations, long-haul adventures, and vibrant city breaks – and that's just the beginning of our story. We send around two million holidaymakers on their dream breaks every year. And we're still growing.

Powered by our deep-rooted entrepreneurial spirit, proprietary tech, curiosity and our incredible people, we're accelerating - delivering best in class technology, the ultimate holiday app, and experiences that keep our customers coming back for more.

As a Principal Engineer, you'll play a key role in transforming how millions of people discover, book, and experience travel through our platforms. This is an opportunity to drive technical innovation at scale while working with cutting-edge technologies across our full stack. You'll architect and influence technical decisions that extend beyond individual teams, shaping the foundation of our technology platform. Your work will directly impact the experiences of our customers while building scalable, reusable patterns that accelerate development across the business.

This role is pivotal in supporting our Head of Engineering to define and deliver the next phase of our technology strategy. You'll help lead transformation initiatives, modernise legacy systems, and enhance our search functionality — ensuring performance, scalability, and innovation across the platform.

What You'll Be Doing Day To Day

• Partner with the VP of Product Engineering to define the technical strategy, architectural direction, and transformation roadmap.
• Lead the design and optimisation of search systems, ensuring relevance, scalability, and reliability.
• Oversee the evolution of existing systems — maintaining and refactoring C# codebases while building and migrating services in Kotlin or Java.
• Champion engineering best practices across security, performance, testing, and continuous delivery.
• Provide architectural leadership across multiple teams, establishing standards and reusable patterns that scale.
• Mentor and empower engineers to grow their technical and leadership capabilities.
• Collaborate closely with Product, Data, and Platform teams to deliver complex change with measurable impact.
• Lead transformation and modernisation initiatives, balancing technical ambition with business priorities.

You’ll be a great addition to our team if you have the following skills, knowledge and experience:

• Experienced in shaping technical direction and influencing engineering outcomes at scale.
• Skilled in designing and optimising search technologies (e.g., Elasticsearch, Solr, OpenSearch, or similar).
• Proficient in Kotlin or Java, and comfortable modernising C# legacy systems.
• Knowledgeable in distributed systems, cloud-native architectures (AWS preferred), and modern web technologies.
• Adept at leading teams through change and transformation, promoting collaboration and continuous improvement.
• A clear and confident communicator, capable of translating complex technical concepts for diverse audiences.

What To Expect From Our Interview Process

We'll run a multiple stage interview process, one stage of which may be an in-person interview at our fabulous Aeroworks office in Manchester city centre. We want to make sure everybody has the opportunity to perform at their best. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the interview process please let the Talent Acquisition team know and they will be happy to assist.

Ways of working

Our full time hours are 37.5 per week, but we don't have rigid working hours so you can find the working pattern that's right for you. We have core working hours between 10am - 4pm, so we can collaborate and enjoy the social side of work. We also have hybrid working so we all work from home and from our Aeroworks office in Manchester City Centre. You'll be in the office one day every two weeks, and you're more than welcome to come in more if you'd like.

Our Benefits

We might be biased but we think our colleagues are pretty great. They're the people that have made On the Beach what it is today and continue to make it vibrant and successful tomorrow. That's why we offer a competitive benefits package, known as our Beach Perks, to all On the Beach colleagues.

• 25 days holiday plus your birthday off
• Generous discount on holidays, plus you will receive 2 extra days annual leave on top of your holiday allowance to use whilst you're away on your On the Beach package holiday
• Access to Learnerbly learning platform, plus workshops, courses and professional qualifications
• Enhanced maternity, paternity, shared parental leave and adoption pay, plus other family friendly support
• Employee Assistance Programme and free access to counselling
• Simplyhealth Optimise Health Plan
• Company Sick Pay scheme
• Regular wellbeing events
• Gym discount
• Share Incentive Plan (SIP)
• Death in Service cover
• Onsite subsidised coffee shop
• The Sandbox (our very own bar)
• Food and drink discounts across a number of venues in Manchester City Centre
• Regular social events
• Cycle to Work scheme

Diversity And Inclusion

You'll find diverse teams at OTB, reflective of the world we live in and the customers we serve. We believe strongly that difference, not uniformity, is critical to our success. We know that better decisions happen when they are made by a range of voices, perspectives and experiences. As an equal opportunity employer, we value and welcome applications from all sections of the community.