Senior AI Backend Software Engineer I - AI Application Platform

About the company

At Booking.com, data drives our decisions. Technology is at our core. And innovation is everywhere. But our company is more than datasets, lines of code or A/B tests. We’re the thrill of the first night in a new place. The excitement of the next morning. The friends you make. The journeys you take. The sights you see. And the food you sample. Through our products, partners and people, we make it easier for everyone to experience the world.

Role Description

Our mission at Booking.com is to create visionary, innovative, and personalised travel experiences for millions of customers worldwide. Across our offices worldwide, we continue to innovate by solving some of the most complex challenges in travel and technology and plan for the exciting developments that lie ahead through strategic long-term investments in what we believe the future of travel can be.

As a Software Engineer working on the AI Application Platform, you will work at the intersection of scalable backend systems and cutting-edge AI. You will have the opportunity to design and build the core platform that enables product teams to rapidly develop and deploy AI-powered experiences for millions of people. You will tackle complex performance and scaling challenges, shape the foundation of our AI infrastructure, and collaborate closely with ML engineers, data engineers, and data scientists to bring intelligent systems into production at scale.

Key Responsibilities & Duties

• Design and evaluate architecture solutions for AI infrastructure, rapidly prototyping to validate key assumptions and guide decision-making.
• Explore, benchmark, and integrate new AI/ML tools and technologies to drive innovative engineering solutions that meet evolving business needs.
• Build and maintain scalable, reusable backend services that support real-time AI/ML inference, model deployment, and data pipelines.
• Collaborate closely with ML engineers, data engineers, and data scientists to bring AI/ML models into production and optimize system performance.
• Take end-to-end ownership of system reliability and operational excellence, including performance tuning, observability and incident management.
• Continuously grow technical and interpersonal skills through hands-on experience, knowledge sharing sessions, and industry events.

Role Qualifications & Requirements

We are looking for driven Software Engineers who enjoy solving problems, who initiate solutions and discussions and who believe that any challenge can be scaled with the right approach and tools.

We have found that people who match the following requirements are the ones who fit us best:

• Experience in feature engineering, integrating AI/ML models into production systems, and understanding model behavior, performance and constraints.
• Experience building AI agents and components such as memory, context engineering, retrieval, and orchestration.
• Experience working in cross-functional teams alongside ML engineers, data scientists, and product stakeholders to bring AI/ML products to production.
• 7+ years of professional experience in software engineering, with a focus on backend or platform development.
• Experience building distributed systems at scale, with a focus on performance tuning, observability, and reliability best practices.
• Experience with scalable data storage systems (e.g. MySQL, Redis) and optimizing data access and caching for high-throughput applications.
• Proficiency in one or more server-side programming languages such as Java, Scala, or Python.
• Experience with containerization tools like Docker and Kubernetes, and deploying applications in cloud environments such as AWS or GCP.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity, take ownership of complex problems, and drive them to resolution.
• Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent industry experience.

Benefits & Perks: Global Impact, Personal Relevance

• Annual paid time off and generous paid leave scheme including: parental (22-weeks paid leave), grandparent, bereavement, and care leave.
• Hybrid working including flexible working arrangements, working from home furniture and ergonomic support, and up to 20 days per year working from abroad (home country).
• A beautiful sustainable HQ Campus in Amsterdam, that offers on-site meals, coffee, and snacks, multi-faith and breastfeeding rooms at the office.
• Commuting allowance and bike reimbursement scheme.
• Discounts & Wallet credits to spend on our products, upgrade to Booking.com Genius Level 3, and friends & family Booking.com discount vouchers.
• Free access to online learning platforms, development and mentorship programs.
• Global Employee Assistance Program, free Headspace membership.

Key Skills

• Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, GCP, Cost optimization, Flink, Stream processing, Spark, Batch processing, Weaviate, Pinecone, Milvus, Qdrant, Chroma, Vector search, Semantic search, Embeddings, MySQL, PostgreSQL, AWS RDS, Amazon Aurora, Oracle, MS SQL Server, Redis, AWS Elasticache, Memcached, Feature Engineering, Feature Store, Grafana, Prometheus, Arize, Dashboards and alerts, Python, Java, Scala, N8n, Temporal.io, Cadence, Workflow orchestration, Agent Orchestration, MCP, A2A, ACP, TAP, OAP, FCP, GPT, Claude, Grok, Llama, Gemini, Qwen, R1, Prompt Engineering, LLM Evals, RAG, Guardrails, Memory, Multimodal, Agentic system design, Agentic AI, system design, AI Agents design, Agentic design pattern, Context engineering, Scaling LLM inference, Search and Ranking, Recommendation Systems, Optimization and Causal Inference, LLMs and Natural Language Understanding, Computer Vision, Speech and Multimodal AI, Reinforcement Learning, Generative AI

Pre-Employment Screening

If your application is successful, your personal data may be used for a pre-employment screening check by a third party as permitted by applicable law. Depending on the vacancy and applicable law, a pre-employment screening may include employment history, education and other information (such as media information) that may be necessary for determining your qualifications and suitability for the position.