Staff Software Engineer, Meta AI
Concord · USD 160,000-180,000 / year · Full-time · Hybrid · Posted Sep 29, 2026
At a glance
- Employment
- Full-time
- Workplace
- Hybrid
- Location
- Concord
- Salary
- USD 160,000-180,000 / year · Base salary
About the role
- KAYAK is looking for a Staff Software Engineer, Meta AI to implement new features and maintain KAYAK’s AI.
- You will be part of a high-powered team helping millions of people find the best hotels and ways to fly every day.
Responsibilities
- Design, implement and maintain reliable production software for KAYAK’s travel-search and trip-planning experiences.
- Build and evolve APIs and services supporting AI-assisted search, conversational travel planning, itineraries and related user experiences.
- Investigate technical problems, assess trade-offs and choose practical solutions that improve reliability, performance and maintainability.
- Write automated tests and contribute to quality across unit, integration and end-to-end testing.
- Participate in code reviews and technical discussions, providing constructive feedback focused on correctness, clarity and maintainability.
- Work with engineers, product managers and designers to clarify requirements and deliver useful, accessible user experiences.
- Contribute to features such as ASK AI, smart filters, AI-generated hotel review summaries, Explore and related search experiences.
- Help make AI-assisted features dependable, transparent and useful to travelers.
- Learn unfamiliar systems and share knowledge with teammates through documentation, pairing and technical discussions.
- Monitor and improve production behavior through effective debugging, observability and root-cause analysis.
Requirements
- Experience building and maintaining production software.
- Proficiency in Java or another relevant programming language.
- Familiarity with APIs, data structures and software-design principles.
- Experience testing software and investigating defects or production issues.
- The ability to explain technical decisions clearly in writing and conversation.
- The ability to take ownership of assigned work while asking for input or support when needed.
- Experience contributing to projects from design through implementation, release and maintenance.
Preferred qualifications
- Experience with distributed systems, search, personalization or other high-volume consumer products.
- Experience with AI, machine learning or large language model applications.
- Experience with relational databases or other structured data stores.
- Experience working on web products, mobile products or travel-related products.
- Experience improving accessibility, reliability or usability.
- Experience working with Java and Spring.
- Experience with cloud services, CI/CD pipelines and automated testing frameworks.
Benefits
- Work from (almost) anywhere for up to 20 days per year
- Company-paid therapy sessions through SpringHealth
- Company-paid subscription to HeadSpace
- Company-wide week off a year
- No meeting Fridays
- Paid parental leave
- Generous paid vacation + time off for your birthday
- Paid volunteer time
- Development Dollars and leadership development
- Free lunch 2 days per week
Workplace
- This role requires commuting to the Concord, MA office 3 times a week.
Skills
- Java
- Spring
- APIs
- AI
- Machine Learning
- CI/CD
- Cloud Services
