Senior Backend Engineer (Amadeus)

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Senior Backend Engineer (Amadeus) based in Brazil.

As a Senior Backend Engineer, you will play a key role in building and scaling a modern, end-to-end travel booking platform. You will bring deep travel technology expertise to complex booking workflows, with a particular focus on Amadeus and other GDS integrations. You will own backend features from architecture and implementation through production, working on systems that support flights, hotels, and future travel products. The role combines hands-on engineering with deep domain knowledge across reservations, pricing, ticketing, cancellations, and exchanges. You will collaborate with a small, highly autonomous engineering team distributed across regions and work closely with product and technology leadership. This is an opportunity to shape a core booking engine from the ground up while solving challenging problems in a fast-moving environment. LATAM-based candidates are preferred to provide strong working-hour overlap with the U.S.

Accountabilities:

• Design, develop, and maintain robust integrations with Amadeus APIs, while supporting additional GDS integrations as the platform expands.
• Build and enhance a scalable booking engine supporting flights and hotels, with additional travel products planned for future development.
• Own the complete reservation lifecycle, including search, pricing, availability, booking, ticketing, cancellations, changes, refunds, and exchanges.
• Address complex travel technology scenarios such as mid-flow price and availability changes, PNR management, multi-destination itineraries, fare rules, and room/rate combinations.
• Develop and maintain backend services and APIs that power critical travel workflows.
• Design solutions that provide strong scalability, performance, reliability, and resilience across integrations and distributed systems.
• Take ownership of features end-to-end, from technical design and implementation through testing, deployment, and production support.
• Investigate and resolve challenging integration issues, including cases where third-party APIs behave differently from their documentation.
• Collaborate closely with engineering, product, QA, and technology leadership across distributed teams and time zones.
• Contribute to architectural improvements, code quality, automated testing, CI/CD practices, and overall engineering maturity.
• Help shape product and technical decisions by applying practical knowledge of travel workflows and their impact on travelers and travel agents.
• Proactively identify risks, investigate problems independently, and propose pragmatic solutions rather than waiting for direction.

Requirements:

• Demonstrated hands-on experience building travel technology products using GDS APIs, with strong preference for Amadeus; experience with Sabre or Travelport is also relevant.
• Strong practical understanding of the travel reservation lifecycle, including air and hotel booking, ticketing, cancellations, rescheduling, refunds, and exchanges.
• Solid knowledge of core travel distribution concepts such as PNRs, fare rules, negotiated/private fares, availability, pricing behavior, and booking workflows.
• Approximately 5-10+ years of backend engineering experience, or equivalent depth of relevant professional experience.
• Strong experience developing API integrations and distributed backend systems.
• Professional experience with PHP and Laravel, or strong backend engineering experience in another language combined with a genuine willingness to work with PHP.
• Experience working with relational databases such as MySQL or comparable technologies.
• Ability to investigate complex technical issues independently, including interpreting imperfect vendor documentation and diagnosing unexpected API behavior.
• Strong product mindset and understanding of how backend systems translate into customer and business outcomes.
• Ability to operate autonomously as a senior individual contributor while maintaining strong collaboration with a small engineering team.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to work effectively with distributed teams across different time zones.
• Proactive, resourceful, and ownership-driven approach to solving complex technical and product problems.
• Exposure to NDC or direct airline distribution is a plus.
• Experience with Python or other backend languages is beneficial.
• Familiarity with AWS, GCP, or Azure is advantageous.
• Exposure to NoSQL technologies such as MongoDB is a plus.
• Experience working in startup or scaling environments and improving CI/CD, testing, and engineering processes is desirable.
• Frontend development experience is not required.

Benefits:

• Fully remote position with flexibility to work from Brazil or elsewhere in LATAM.
• LATAM-based opportunity designed to provide meaningful overlap with U.S. working hours.
• Opportunity to build a core travel booking engine from the ground up.
• Hands-on work with complex GDS and Amadeus integrations and real-world travel technology challenges.
• High level of technical ownership and autonomy in a senior individual contributor role.
• Direct exposure to product, business, engineering, and technology leadership.
• Opportunity to influence architecture, engineering practices, and product direction.
• Collaboration with a small, highly focused, and technically engaged engineering team.
• Exposure to international travel technology workflows across flights, hotels, and future travel products.
• Opportunity to work on a growing product where your contributions can have a direct and visible impact.