Senior Software Engineer, Distributed Systems

About Skyscanner

Everyone loves travelling, but planning is not without its challenges. That’s why we’ve spent 20 years building tools that turn travel-planning chaos into a breeze. Today, around 100 million travellers count on us every month to skip the whole “47 browser tabs open” phase and find flights, cars, and hotels quickly and easily. Joining Skyscanner means becoming part of a global brand that’s striving to become the planet’s go-to travel hack accessible for all. Our vision? To be the world’s number one travel ally.

About The Role (Hybrid)

• Powering smarter decisions: As a Senior Software Engineer in our Backspin squad, you’ll help make experimentation simple, scalable, and seriously impactful across Skyscanner.
• Building at scale: You’ll work on our in-house experimentation platform — the kind that sits proudly alongside the likes of Netflix, Airbnb, and Spotify.
• Operating at the crossroads: This role lives at the intersection of Web Engineering, Data Engineering, and Data Science, where things are complex (in a good way).
• Driving real impact: Your work will directly influence how teams test ideas, learn faster, and make higher-quality decisions backed by rock-solid data.
• Owning big problems: From design through delivery, you’ll take the lead on solving technically rich, business-critical challenges.
• Collaborating widely: You’ll partner closely with product managers, data scientists, and engineers across Skyscanner to shape the future of experimentation.
• Growing the platform: As experimentation continues to scale year on year, you’ll help evolve both our tech and our ways of working.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Designing distributed systems: You’ll build and maintain high-performance, secure, and scalable systems that underpin our global experimentation platform.
• Advancing experimentation: You’ll develop features that help teams run, monitor, and analyse experiments — from segmented insights to multi-platform testing.
• Raising the quality bar: You’ll ensure our systems are reliable, observable, and built to handle experimentation at serious scale.
• Collaborating cross-functionally: You’ll work hand-in-hand with product, data science, and platform teams to align tools with real user and business needs.
• Mentoring others: You’ll support and guide junior engineers, sharing knowledge and helping the whole squad level up.
• Championing best practice: You’ll drive clean architecture, thoughtful design, and continuous improvement across the codebase.
• Shaping the future: You’ll help influence the technical direction of our experimentation platform as it continues to grow and evolve.

About You

• Distributed systems savvy: You have strong experience designing and building scalable, resilient distributed systems.
• Technically versatile: You’re comfortable working with Java and Node.js, and you’re happy getting your hands dirty across the stack.
• Data-aware: You bring familiarity with data pipelines, and bonus points if you’ve worked with Python, PySpark, Databricks, or AWS.
• Platform-minded: You enjoy building tools and platforms that empower other teams to move faster and smarter.
• Collaborative by nature: You communicate clearly, work well across disciplines, and enjoy solving problems together.
• A natural mentor: You like helping others grow, sharing feedback, and raising engineering standards around you.
• Curious and driven: You’re excited by experimentation, learning, and tackling complex problems in new ways.

What It’s Like Here

We are the real deal — no corporate gloss, no empty promises. Just a team of genuinely curious, caring humans building things that help travellers explore the world a little easier. Skyscanner is made up of brilliant humans from every corner of the world. We believe travel makes the world better — and that the same is true of our diverse teams. We’re proud to be an equal opportunities employer and are committed to building an inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive and products that are accessible to all.

Sound like your kind of adventure? Apply now and help us shape the future of travel.

We’re committed to ensuring our application and recruitment processes are inclusive and accessible to everyone. If you require any reasonable adjustments or accommodations for interviews, and/or wish to apply under the Disability Confident scheme, please let your recruiter know.