Staff Backend Software Engineer

About Hopper: Hopper is a hyper-growth travel technology and fintech pioneer on a global mission to become the world’s leading travel platform. Capitalizing on massive real-time datasets and proprietary machine learning algorithms, Hopper merges a premier global travel agency offering alongside highly unique financial technology tools to deliver total transparency and unmatched savings to travelers. Our consumer application has been downloaded over 120 million times, establishing intense popularity among Gen Z and millennial demographics. Beyond our mobile interface, our B2B division—Hopper Technology Solutions (HTS)—now accounts for over 75% of the macro business infrastructure. HTS supercharges the direct booking channels of the world’s largest global brands, including Capital One, Nubank, and Air Canada, scaling an online shopping category valued at $1 trillion.

Position Overview

We are seeking a highly autonomous, systems-fluent, and development-oriented Staff Backend Software Engineer to lead the scaling, algorithmic offer-matching, and multi-tenant expansion of our core travel commerce engine under a permanent, full-time remote contractor configuration open throughout Ireland. Sitting within our specialized Commerce business unit, you will act as a primary technical authority responsible for moving our infrastructure from a basic transaction vendor to a strategic cardholder intelligence layer serving over 410 million users. Shifting completely away from routine non-regulated administrative data transcription loops, front-line helpline response queues, or basic website template adjustments, you will run an active multi-tier distributed backend system, real-time customer behavior telemetry, and agentic AI orchestration laboratory. Partnering directly next to senior engineering peers, business directors, and product managers within a low-process environment powered by trust, you will drive technical roadmap architecture asynchronously. This position requires a software veteran with an extensive track record operating at a staff or principal capacity who handles application layers fluidly natively using Backend, Python, and Technical Support primitives, commands complete operational intimacy with complex event-driven architectures, and orchestrates automated AI workflows with elite developer judgment.

Key Responsibilities

• Distributed Platform Governance: Architect, implement, and maintain highly scalable backend services and foundation patterns that power a multi-tenant travel commerce engine natively utilizing Backend engineering rules.
• AI Agent Orchestration: Integrate and direct autonomous AI agents, multi-model prompt chains, and automated developer feedback loops to build, refactor, and ship intricate system features at an accelerated pace.
• Codebase Velocity Tuning: Identify and deploy structural refactoring and developer tooling enhancements to maximize codebase ease-of-use for both humans and AI agents.
• End-to-End Feature Delivery: Own features from deep backend transactional logic down to partner-facing surface interfaces, utilizing stack-agnostic principles and multi-language scripts natively deploying Python or Scala adapters.
• Hyperscaler Infrastructure Optimization: Configure, manage, and scale secure data pipelines, cache registries, and microservices natively leveraging Google Cloud Platform (GCP) services.
• Asynchronous Architecture Blueprinting: Draft, publish, and defend thoughtful technical specs, RFC blueprints, and architectural documentation to build team consensus asynchronously with zero operational drag.
• Tier-Three Technical Support Triage: Provide high-level escalation troubleshooting, log data auditing, and system bottleneck diagnosis to safeguard partner travel portals natively deploying Technical Support baselines.
• Roadmap Strategy Synthesis: Partner close-knit naast Product Managers and enterprise financial partners to transform abstract user behaviors into competitive, high-margin transactional offers.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• Possess significant, deep professional software engineering experience designing, scaling, and maintaining high-concurrency production-grade distributed systems.
• Proven tracking history operating successfully within a technical leadership capacity (such as a Staff or Principal Individual Contributor track) inside a fast-paced product-led technology environment.
• Expert AI-Native Workflow Command: Meticulous practical experience implementing defensive engineering guardrails, validation loops, and regression verification boundaries around AI-assisted code generation.
• Stack-agnostic technical aptitude with an established track record picking up complex paradigms rapidly, backed by a strong willingness to achieve absolute system mastery in **Scala** and distributed microservices.
• Outstanding written, verbal, and textual presentation communication strengths in English, with a demonstrated ability to articulate complex structural trade-offs cleanly to cross-functional stakeholders.
• Irish Independent Contractor Engagement Alignment: Absolute readiness to operate as a self-employed individual or through a Personal Service Company (PSC), managing your own domestic tax, PRSI, and VAT compliance alongside valid business registration and professional indemnity insurance proofs.
• Location Context: Position operates under 100% remote parameters open exclusively to qualified distributed systems and travel fintech engineering authorities residing permanently within Ireland (including Dublin).

Preferred Strategic Indicators (Nice to Have)

• Prior platform or consulting history building automated checkout graphs explicitly inside the travel fintech, multi-tenant global e-commerce, banking loyalty portal, or high-volume transactional processing sectors.
• Direct operational familiarity manipulating multi-region container deployments or client-side interfaces using React and TypeScript frameworks.
• An adaptable, fearless persona characterized by deep product intuition, a total obsession with anchoring technical elegance within actual customer experiences, and a multiplier mindset that levels up surrounding peers.

What We Offer

• Premium European Travel FinTech Engineering Remuneration Matrix: A highly lucrative independent contractor compensation scale discussed transparently and calibrated precisely to your individual systems pedigree and deployment velocity, backed by over $750 million in private institutional capital.
• 100% remote workspace infrastructure autonomy anywhere within Ireland, liberating your daily calendar from rigid office travel expenses.
• Venture Scale Financial Infrastructure Influence: Elite professional checkpoints built by single-handedly blueprinting the intelligent offer layers, backend patterns, and AI-driven automation blocks moving billions of dollars worth of global travel commerce.
• Access to a trust-driven, low-bureaucracy startup culture that prioritizes continuous technical experimentation, uncompromised autonomy, and asynchronous alignment for absolute career mastery.