---
title: 'Engineering Manager, K4B at KAYAK'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/engineering-manager-k4b-kayak-berlin-fehs7r8n056r'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-05'
---

# Engineering Manager, K4B at KAYAK

- **Company:** KAYAK
- **Location:** Berlin, Germany
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-07-17
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-05
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/kayak/26d86eda-64d6-4eff-a04d-1835c9b118e0

## Job description

KAYAK, part of Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG), is a leading travel search engine. With billions of queries across our platforms, we help people find their perfect flight, stay, rental car and vacation package. We're also transforming business travel with a new corporate travel solution, KAYAK for Business.

As an employee of KAYAK, you will be part of a travel company that operates a portfolio of global metasearch brands including momondo, Cheapflights and HotelsCombined, among others. From start-up to industry leader, innovation is in our DNA and every employee has an opportunity to make their mark. Our focus is on building the best travel search engine to make it easier for everyone to experience the world.

At KAYAK for Business, we're building the future of corporate travel technology — and the engineering teams behind it are at the heart of that mission. As an Engineering Manager, you'll lead one or more agile engineering teams delivering software that helps companies and their travelers move smarter and with less friction, while playing a key role in shaping our growing engineering hub.

This role will be required to work from our Berlin office at least 3 days per week.

In this role you will:

- Own end-to-end delivery for one or more agile engineering teams, ensuring the team consistently ships high-quality software aligned with product and business objectives, measured against clear KPIs.
- Define and drive the technical roadmap for your team's domain — collaborating with product managers and peer engineering leaders to translate business goals into a prioritized, executable plan.
- Design and enforce engineering best practices across the team's codebase, including coding standards, testing strategies, observability, and clear Definition of Done criteria, raising the overall quality bar.
- Lead hiring and performance management for a team of software engineers, owning the full employee lifecycle from sourcing and onboarding through career development, performance reviews, and promotions.
- Coach and develop engineers at all levels — including senior engineers and emerging technical leads — through regular 1:1s, structured feedback, and deliberate career conversations that build the next generation of leaders.
- Collaborate cross-functionally with product managers, designers, and peer engineering managers to plan and deliver complex, multi-team initiatives, ensuring clear alignment on scope, dependencies, and timelines.
- Identify and remove delivery risks proactively — whether organizational, technical, or process-related — and drive improvements without waiting to be directed, keeping the team operating at high velocity.
- Champion a culture of quality and continuous improvement, embedding practices such as blameless post-mortems, structured incident response, and iterative process refinement into the team's day-to-day rhythm.
- Influence technical architecture across the team's domain by preparing and participating in design reviews, guiding architectural decisions, and ensuring systems are built for scalability, reliability, and long-term maintainability.
- Help build and shape the engineering presence, contributing to local talent acquisition, onboarding, and team culture as part of the organization's strategic expansion of its engineering hub.

Please apply if you have:

- 1+ years of experience leading engineering teams within the travel industry focused on supplier integrations (such as flights, hotels, or trains using Direct APIs, GDS, NDC, NDC[X]) or managing teams executing large-scale third-party content integrations.
- 8+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 3 years in an engineering leadership or management role directly managing software engineers, and a proven track record of leading productive teams and shipping high-quality software in a fast-paced environment; equivalent experience, training, or transferable skills considered.
- A proven track record of ownership and innovation within a data-driven, results-oriented environment, along with the ability to rapidly learn and master new business domains.
- A track record of steering organizational transformation, maximizing gains from agile methodologies, and fostering process optimization and innovation
- Strong technical fundamentals in distributed systems, API design, and backend service architecture, with the ability to credibly guide architectural decisions and participate meaningfully in design reviews.
- Demonstrated experience owning the full people management lifecycle — hiring, onboarding, performance management, career development, and promotions — with a genuine commitment to developing engineering talent.
- Experience coaching and developing engineers at multiple levels, including senior engineers and emerging technical leads, through structured feedback, regular 1:1s, and deliberate career conversations.
- Solid understanding of agile delivery methodologies and the software development lifecycle, including CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and observability practices; comfortable driving process improvements within a sprint-based team.
- Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to articulate a clear technical vision to both technical and non-technical audiences and collaborate effectively across product, design, and engineering functions.
- Professional proficiency in written and spoken English.
- Hands-on experience with modern software development tooling — including version control systems (e.g., GitHub), issue tracking (e.g., Jira), and logging or observability platforms — and a demonstrated openness to adopting AI-assisted development tools to improve team productivity.
- Comfort working in a distributed, multilingual engineering organization with teams across multiple time zones and office locations.
- A degree in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience; no specific certification is required.

## BENEFITS AND PERKS:

- Work from (almost) anywhere for up to 20 days per year
- Focus on mental health and well-being:
- Company-paid therapy sessions through SpringHealth
- Company-paid subscription to HeadSpace
- Company-wide week off a year - the whole team fully recharges (and returns without a pile-up of work!)
- No meeting Fridays
- Paid parental leave
- Paid volunteer time
- Focus on your career growth:
- Development Dollars
- Leadership development
- Access to thousands of on-demand e-learnings
- Travel Discounts
- Employee Resource Groups
- 6 weeks paid vacation + a day off for your birthday
- Free lunch 2 days per week
- Pension plan contributions
- Public transportation subsidies
- Bike leasing program
- Monthly social events, Thursday happy hours, sports teams
- An awesome office in Friedrichshain, Berlin

## INCLUSION

At KAYAK, we want everyone to have the space to grow, share ideas and do great work. That’s why we’re focused on hiring the best talent from all walks of life and experiences, supporting them well and making sure no one feels like they have to fit a mold to belong here.

Need any adjustments for the interview, application or on the job? No problem - just give us a heads-up. We’ve got you.

## #LI-MP1

## About KAYAK

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: KAYAK is the world’s leading travel metasearch engine, enabling travelers to compare flights, hotels, rental cars, and vacation packages from hundreds of sites in one place.
- **Entity Type**: Private (subsidiary of Booking Holdings Inc., NASDAQ: BKNG)
- **Headquarters**: Stamford, Connecticut, USA (with 15 international offices)
- **Founded**: 2004
- **Founders**: Steve Hafner (former CEO until February 2026) and Paul English

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Online travel, travel technology, metasearch.
- **Target customers**: B2C (leisure and business travelers) and B2B (travel providers, advertisers, and corporate clients via KAYAK for Business).
- **Mission or purpose statement**: To help travelers make confident travel decisions by providing transparent, comprehensive search results that put control back in their hands. KAYAK believes “travel makes the world better.”

## Products & Services
- **KAYAK Metasearch**: Core product allowing comparison of flights, hotels, rental cars, and vacation packages from hundreds of travel sites.
- **KAYAK for Business (K4B)**: Free corporate travel solution for business travelers.
- **KAYAK Mobile App**: iOS and Android app offering seamless travel planning, price forecasts, price alerts, trip management, and AI-powered search.
- **KAYAK.ai**: AI-powered travel assistant providing personalized tips, live pricing, and conversational booking.
- **Explore Tool**: Inspires spontaneous travel by showing destinations within a chosen budget.
- **Trips**: Personal travel assistant for organizing, managing, and sharing itineraries with real-time flight status.
- **Price Forecast & Alerts**: Predicts price trends and notifies users of changes for flights, hotels, and car rentals.
- **KAYAK for Partners & Advertisers**: Commission-based and advertising revenue models.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed as a subsidiary; parent Booking Holdings has a market cap of ~$150+ billion (as of mid-2025).
- **Key Metric**: Processes billions of searches annually; 800+ team members; 60+ international sites in 25+ languages.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Owned by Booking Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: BKNG), which acquired KAYAK in 2013. Partners with hundreds of airlines, hotels, online travel agencies, and car rental companies.
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - Named #1 Best Airfare Search Site by Frommer’s (2024, 2025).
  - Won World’s Best Flight & Hotel Comparison Website at World Travel Tech Awards (2022–2024).
  - Recognized by Statista & COMPUTER BILD as a Top Online Platform 2025.
  - First mainstream travel company to introduce AI-powered conversational search (KAYAK AI Mode).
  - Expanded portfolio of 7 travel search brands globally.

## Competitive Advantages
- **First-mover in travel metasearch**: Pioneered the concept in 2004, creating a trusted, comprehensive comparison platform.
- **Unbiased results**: Displays fares from all major providers without favoritism, clearly labeling booking sources.
- **Massive data advantage**: Processes billions of searches, enabling powerful AI/ML tools like Price Forecast and AI Mode.
- **Global brand portfolio**: Manages 7 brands (KAYAK, SWOODOO, checkfelix, momondo, Cheapflights, Mundi, HotelsCombined) with a global footprint.
- **Strong financial backing**: Part of Booking Holdings, providing stability and resources for innovation.
- **High trust & recognition**: Consistently ranked #1 by leading travel publications and awards.

## Strategic Focus
- **AI & personalization**: Leading with AI-powered search and conversational planning to improve user experience.
- **Expanding corporate travel**: Growing KAYAK for Business as a free, self-service corporate travel tool.
- **Global scale**: Continuing to expand international sites and language support.
- **Innovation in search tools**: Developing new features like Price Forecast, Explore, and real-time trip management.
- **Maintaining transparency**: Strengthening trust through clear labeling and fair marketplace practices.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Mission-driven, data-obsessed team of 800+ passionate about travel technology; emphasis on career growth, skill development, and individual learning.
- **Work policy**: Hybrid model – team members work from the office three days a week, with flexibility to come in more often. Some roles are fully remote (US-based).
- **Perks**: Part of a global network including OpenTable and a portfolio of travel metasearch brands; employee-resource groups for under-represented communities; global equal-pay policy.
- **Engineering culture**: Strong focus on data, AI, and scalable systems (billions of queries); tech stack includes modern Java, frontend frameworks, and ETL tools.
- **Global opportunities**: 15 international offices with opportunities to work across teams.
- **Recognition**: Named a top employer by Built In and industry awards.
- **Caution**: KAYAK warns of fraudulent job ads – all genuine recruitment ends with @kayak.com, and no payment is ever requested from candidates.

## Sources
1. [kayak.com](https://www.kayak.com/careers/)
2. [kayak.com](https://www.kayak.com/about)
3. [kayak.com](https://www.kayak.com/c/help/about/)
4. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/kayak)
5. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/kayak)

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- [Director of Cyber Security](https://feeny.ai/job/director-of-cyber-security-kayak-concord-dt09ta85a7a8) — Concord
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