Software Architect (Booking platform & APIS)

Svitla Systems Inc. is looking for a Software Architect (Booking platform & APIs) for a full-time position (40 hours per week) in Europe. Our client is a fast-growing US company running an end-to-end marketplace for hotel amenities. Hotels such as Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt use its B2B SaaS tool to list day passes, spa treatments, day rooms and other experiences; consumers book them through the B2C marketplace.

You will receive loosely defined problems, such as making the platform GDPR compliant, and be expected to break them down, propose a plan with options and trade-offs, agree on it with the client’s engineering leadership, and then deliver it yourself.

Engineering is organized around three broad areas (Marketplace for B2C, Hotels for B2B, and Platform for infrastructure and SRE), but people are pulled into problems rather than fixed into rigid teams. The client works heavily with AI: engineers use Claude and an in-house agent that plans, implements, reviews, and opens pull requests, so much of the code will be AI-assisted and what matters most is understanding the system, judging what AI produces, and spotting risks and bottlenecks early.

This role requires working hours with overlap until 8:00 PM CET (overlap until 7:00 PM CET is also acceptable).

Requirements

• 8+ years in software engineering, with recent experience as a tech lead, architect, or staff-level engineer.
• Strong back-end and system design skills: distributed systems, APIs, data modeling, scalability, and reliability.
• Production experience with Node.js/TypeScript.
• Experience with Ruby on Rails is a significant plus. Candidates without it must be ready to learn the technology.
• Proven ability to take an undefined problem from discovery to delivery with little supervision.
• Hands-on experience with AI coding tools (such as Claude, Cursor, and Copilot) and the judgment to validate their output.
• Excellent communication skills: the ability to explain ideas clearly, ask the right questions, and keep stakeholders informed without needing to be prompted.
• High ownership and genuine motivation to build products in a fast-moving environment.
• Upper-Intermediate English or higher.

Will be a plus

• Experience with both Node.js and Ruby on Rails.
• Hands-on GDPR or other data-privacy compliance experience.
• Background in marketplaces, booking and reservation systems, hospitality, or travel.
• Experience leading a large system rewrite or migration.
• Experience with agentic AI workflows in the software development lifecycle.
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure and SRE practices.

Responsibilities

• Own ambiguous, high-impact initiatives end to end: investigate, define scope, propose solutions, and deliver them.
• Lead the technical side of international expansion, including GDPR compliance (data export, deletion, consent, and data residency).
• Design and build back-end systems supporting new verticals: spa, events and ticketing, day rooms, and food and beverage.
• Take part in the rewrite of core systems, shaping architecture and migration strategy.
• Present options with clear trade-offs to engineering leadership and drive decisions to completion.
• Write production code daily, using AI tools effectively and critically reviewing AI-generated code.
• Identify technical risks, bottlenecks, and dependencies before they become problems.
• Collaborate with the principal engineer and the Marketplace, Hotels, and Platform teams.
• Communicate proactively and clearly, in writing and on calls, with a US-based team.