About Booking.com
Booking.com’s mission is to make it easier for everyone to experience the world. To achieve this mission we are opening up new career opportunities to help us shape the future of travel.
We believe that our human desire to explore the planet's beauty and discover more about other people and cultures will endure. The world is waiting for us. Together, we will be ready.
Role Description
Messaging & Rewards is a cross-vertical technology track within Growth Marketing that powers how Booking.com communicates with travelers across their entire journey — from inspiration and booking through trip and post‑stay. The track delivers a unified in‑house messaging platform that orchestrates marketing, transactional, and service communications across channels (email, push, in‑app, SMS, social messaging, and future channels), enabling relevant, personalized, and timely messages at massive scale. It also operates the rewards and offers tooling that generates millions of personalized incentives per day, driving repeat bookings, cross‑vertical attach, and long‑term traveler loyalty.
As an Engineering Manager, Software in the Messaging & Rewards track, you will lead engineering teams building and operating high‑throughput, event‑driven messaging and rewards systems that are business‑critical for both Growth Marketing and the wider company. We are currently hiring for two roles within the track:
- Role 1 – Messaging Transport team: Manage an existing team handling critical email and notification transport infrastructure. This is an infra‑heavy role for an experienced EM who has worked with P0 systems and can drive long‑term technical vision as the team modernizes legacy components and leads the evolution toward a common Enterprise Messaging Hub.
- Role 2 – Social Channels team: Lead a new team (4 developers + 5 contractors) focused on expanding to WhatsApp, Instagram, and other social channels. This role is more product/commercial‑focused and requires someone comfortable with ambiguity, experimentation, and intense cross‑functional collaboration with Product, Marketing, Legal, and external partners.
You will work closely with Product, Data, and Marketing stakeholders to evolve our enterprise messaging hub, modernize core infrastructure, and unlock new messaging and rewards capabilities for travelers and internal users.
This role sits in our Growth Marketing organisation in Amsterdam and is part of the wider Booking.com Tech community. You will have a chance to help one of the largest travel websites in the world.
Key Responsibilities and Duties
- Manage one or more teams of software engineers (typically between 5 and 10 people in total).
- Create a culture of ownership and technical excellence, leading by example.
- Empower engineers to develop their careers by providing ad‑hoc and structured coaching, feedback, and growth opportunities.
- Help build and enrich an inclusive work environment comprised of people from diverse backgrounds.
- Contribute to projects by guiding architectural discussions, providing technical coaching to software engineers and occasionally getting hands‑on with code when it materially accelerates outcomes.
- Champion engineering and operational excellence, establishing metrics and processes to monitor system health (SLIs/SLOs), reliability, and performance, and drive continuous improvement.
- Provide technical guidance to your team members and to peers across Messaging & Rewards and adjacent domains (e.g. Growth Marketing, Trips, Fintech, Central Tech).
- Drive team efforts to establish and execute bottom‑up technical roadmaps that support the Messaging & Rewards strategy (e.g. enterprise messaging hub, new channels, AI‑assisted workflows, rewards platform evolution).
- Partner with Product, Data, and Marketing stakeholders to translate commercial and traveler experience goals into robust technical solutions and sequencing.
- Ensure that the systems your teams own meet high bars for security, privacy, compliance, and resiliency, appropriate for high‑criticality messaging and rewards services.
Role Qualifications and Requirements
- 3+ years of experience managing a team of engineers.
- 5+ years of experience in software development with proficiency in one of the following languages: Java, Objective‑C, Swift, JavaScript, or Perl, paired with a familiarity with SQL and NoSQL databases.
- Experience developing large‑scale distributed systems.
- Experience with DevOps best practices such as reliability fundamentals, CI/CD, test engineering, and observability.
- Familiarity with Agile best practices for the full software development life cycle such as coding standards, code reviews, and version control in Git.
- Experience working with cloud technologies like AWS, Google Cloud, Docker, or Kubernetes.
In addition, for Messaging & Rewards we expect:
- Experience working with commercial and/or marketing stakeholders, translating growth, retention, or brand objectives into technical roadmaps and delivery plans.
- Experience working with high‑criticality, always‑on services where uptime, latency, and correctness directly impact revenue and customer experience.
- Experience building messaging systems or high‑throughput, event‑driven systems (for example: email/push/SMS platforms, streaming architectures, pub/sub pipelines, campaign orchestration engines, or similar).
Benefits & Perks: Global Impact, Personal Relevance
Booking.com’s Total Rewards Philosophy is not only about compensation but also about benefits. Our Total Rewards strive to make it easier for you to experience all that life has to offer on your terms so that you can focus on what really matters.
We offer competitive compensation as well as thoughtful, valuable, and even fun benefits which include:
- Headquarters located in one of the most dynamic and cosmopolitan cities in Europe: Amsterdam.
- Contribute to a high‑scale, sophisticated, world‑class product and see the real‑time impact of your work on millions of travelers worldwide.
- Be part of a truly international fast‑paced environment and performance‑driven culture.
- Full relocation support for you and your family to move to Amsterdam. We have fine‑tuned this process by successfully relocating hundreds of Technology professionals to Amsterdam in recent years.
- Performance‑based company that offers 29 vacation days, career advancement, and lucrative compensation, including bonuses and stock potential.
- Discount on Booking.com accommodations with the “Booking Deal” including other perks and benefits.
- Company‑sponsored family and social activities to help our employees become integrated with each other and Dutch culture.
- Diverse and creative colleagues from every corner of the world.
- Health, life, and disability insurance*.
- Annual paid time off and generous paid leave scheme including: parent, grandparent, bereavement, and care leave.
- Hybrid working including flexible working arrangements, and up to 20 days per year working from abroad (home country).
- Industry‑leading product discounts for yourself, friends, and family, including automatic Genius Level 3 status and quarterly Booking.com wallet credit.
- Free access to online learning platforms, development and mentorship programs, and a complimentary Headspace membership.
- On‑site meals, coffee, and snacks, including healthy and vegan options, daily*.
*Benefits may vary slightly depending on location and contract type.
#Think Inclusion: Wellbeing & Inclusion at Booking.com
Inclusion, Diversity, Belonging, Wellbeing and Volunteering (IDBWV) have been a core part of our company culture since day one. This ongoing journey starts with our very own employees, who represent over 140 nationalities and a wide range of ethnic and social backgrounds, genders and sexual orientations.
Take it from our Chief People Officer, Paulo Pisano:
“At Booking.com, the diversity of our people doesn’t just create a unique workplace, it also creates a better and more inclusive travel experience for everyone. Inclusion is at the heart of everything we do. It’s a place where you can make your mark and have a real impact in travel and tech.”
We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable adjustment to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment.
Booking.com is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer
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.