Software Engineer II

About the Role

A Software Engineer II at Booking.com owns the execution of technical elements in the tech stack, products, and processes. This role is responsible for implementing technical solutions based on business requirements, estimating effort and impact, and delivering high-quality craft. Software Engineer IIs understand that test automation quality is as crucial as production code, actively refactoring both to ensure ease of change and sustainable development. Collaboration with colleagues in other job roles to design, prioritize, and implement technical tasks is expected. Due to varying technical skills and commercial knowledge across business units, a Software Engineer II can focus on diverse work, from product features to infrastructure automation, frameworks, tooling, or services.

Key Responsibilities

• Building software applications: Responsible for building software applications using relevant development languages, applying knowledge of systems, services, and tools appropriate for the business area. Writes readable and reusable code by applying standard patterns and libraries, refactoring and simplifying code with design patterns when necessary. Ensures application quality by following standard testing techniques and methods that adhere to the test strategy, and maintains data security, integrity, and quality by effectively following company standards and best practices.
• End-to-End System Ownership: Possesses sufficient knowledge to own a service end-to-end by actively monitoring application health and performance, setting and monitoring relevant metrics, and acting accordingly when violated. Reduces business continuity risks and bus factor by applying state-of-the-art practices and tools, writing appropriate documentation like runbooks and OpDocs. Reduces risk and obtains customer feedback using continuous delivery and experimentation frameworks. Independently manages an application or service by working through deployment and operations in production.
• Technical Incident Management: Responsible for addressing and resolving live production issues, mitigating customer impact within SLA. Improves overall system reliability by producing long-term solutions through root cause analysis. Tracks incidents by contributing to postmortem processes and logging live issues.
• Architectural Guidance: Has basic knowledge to advise product teams toward technical solutions meeting functional, non-functional, and architectural requirements by challenging application design rationale and providing context within the wider architectural landscape. Sets clear direction for technical capability by evaluating and aligning target architecture improvements, reframing architectural designs and decisions for varied stakeholders.
• Software Systems Design: Possesses sufficient knowledge to evaluate possible architecture solutions, considering cost, business requirements, technology requirements, and emerging technologies. Can describe implications of changing or adding a new system by having a broad, high-level understanding of infrastructure and architecture. Helps grow the business and/or accelerate software development by applying engineering techniques (e.g., prototyping, spiking, vendor evaluation) and standards. Designs solutions that meet current requirements and are adaptable for future enhancements to meet business needs.
• Critical Thinking: Responsible for systematically identifying patterns and underlying issues in complex situations and finding solutions by applying logical and analytical thinking. Constructively evaluates and develops ideas, plans, and solutions by reviewing them objectively, considering external knowledge, initiating 'SMART' improvements, and articulating their rationale.
• Continuous Quality and Process Improvement: Possesses sufficient knowledge to identify opportunities for process, system, and structural improvements (e.g., performance gains) by examining current flows, methods, and standards. Designs and implements relevant improvements by defining adapted/new process flows, standards, and practices. Responsible for maintaining data security, integrity, and quality, guiding junior team members on this topic.
• Effective Communication: Responsible for delivering clear, well-structured, and meaningful information to a target audience using suitable mediums and language. Achieves mutually agreeable solutions by staying adaptable, communicating ideas clearly, and practicing active listening. Asks relevant follow-up questions to engage with speakers and understand them, applying listening and reflection techniques.

Key skills/competency

• Software Development
• Test Automation
• End-to-End System Ownership
• Technical Incident Management
• Architectural Design
• Critical Thinking
• Process Improvement
• Data Security
• Code Refactoring
• Effective Communication