Senior Data Engineer - Data & Machine Learning Platform

Key Skills

Apache Cassandra, Apache Hadoop, Apache Kafka, Effective communication skills, Java Programming, Machine learning techniques, MySQL, Python Programming, Scala Programming

Job Description

It wasn’t so long ago that booking a trip to see the Eiffel Tower, stroll down New York’s iconic Madison Avenue or feel the sand between our toes on Copacabana Beach was simply a matter of a few taps on our smartphone. In fact, that’s what we do at Booking.com. We make it easier for everyone to experience the world. Across our offices worldwide, we continue to innovate. To solve for some of the most complex challenges in travel and technology, and to plan for the exciting developments that lie ahead. With strategic long-term investments into what we believe the future of travel can be, we are opening up new career opportunities that will have a strong impact on our mission. We are united in the belief that our very human desire to explore the planet’s beauty and discover more about other people and cultures will endure. 

The Senior Data Engineer is a technical leader who drives data engineering strategies and delivery across a team. You will lead solution envisaging, technical designs, and hands-on implementation. You need to influence, differentiate, and guide the business and technology strategies, as they relate to data, through constant cross-functional interaction. You ask the right questions to the right people in order to align data strategy with commercial strategy, demonstrating technical expertise and business knowledge.

What you’ll be doing:

• Support the data requirements of new and existing solutions by developing scalable and extensible physical data models that can be operationalised within the company’s workflows and infrastructure
• Drive efficiency and resilience by mapping data flows between systems and workflows across the company
• Ensure standardisation by following design patterns in line with global and local data governance requirements
• Support real- time internal and customer- facing actions by developing real- time event- based streaming data pipelines
• Enable rapid data- driven business decisions by developing efficient and scalable data ingestion solutions
• Drive high- value data by connecting different disparate datasets from different systems into a well- managed unified solution
• Own end- to- end data and data applications by defining, monitoring and adjusting relevant SLIs and SLOs
• Handle, mitigate and learn from incidents in a manner that improves the overall system health
• Ensure accuracy by developing criteria, automation, and processes for data production, transport, transform, and storage
• Ensure compliance with data- related requirements by building solutions in line with all applicable standards and regulations
• Ensure ongoing resilience of data processes by monitoring system performance and acting proactively identifying bottlenecks, potential risks, and failure point that might degrade overall quality
• Build software applications by using the relevant development languages and applying in- depth knowledge of the systems, services and tools used by the specific business area
• Write readable and reusable code by applying standard patterns and using standard libraries
• Continuously evolve your craft by keeping up to date with the latest developments in data engineering and related technologies, introducing them to the community and promoting their application in areas where they can generate impact.
• Actively contribute to Data Engineering at Booking.com through training, exploration of new technologies, interviewing, onboarding and mentoring colleagues.
• Push for improvements, scaling and extending data engineering tooling and infrastructure, collaborating with central teams.

What you’ll bring:

You are a role model of the Booking.com values

• Thrive on change and get things done
• Demand a high standard of excellence in their craft
• Embrace the opportunity to improve
• Understand success starts with accountability and ownership
• Care more about being successful and reaching goals together than individually
• Curious, experiments and continuously learns
• Humble, open, friendly and remembers that diversity gives us strength

Level of Education

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science or related field
• Masters degree in Computer Science or related field
• Years of relevant Job Knowledge
• 6+ years of experience in a data engineering or related field using a server side programming languages, preferably Scala, Java, Python, or Perl
• 4+ years of experience building data pipelines and transformations at scale, with technologies such as Hadoop, Cassandra, Kafka, Spark, HBase, MySQL
• 2+ years of experience in data modeling
• 2+ years of experience handling data streaming

Requirements of special knowledge/skills

• Intermediate knowledge of data modeling methods based on best practices, e.g. TOGAF
• Intermediate knowledge of data governance requirements based on best practices, e.g.DAMA, and tooling for continuous automated data governance activities
• Strong knowledge of data quality requirements and implementation methodologies
• Excellent English communication skills, both written and verbal.

In return, we’ll provide:

• Living and working in Amsterdam, one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Europe
• Contributing to a high scale, complex, world renowned product and seeing real-time impact of your work on millions of travellers worldwide
• Working in a fast-paced and performance driven culture
• Opportunity to utilize technical expertise, leadership capabilities and entrepreneurial spirit
• Promote and drive impactful and innovative engineering solutions
• Technical, behavioural and interpersonal competence advancement via on-the-job opportunities, experimental projects, hackathons, conferences and active community participation
• Competitive compensation and benefits package and some great added perks of working in the home city of Booking.com