---
title: 'Manager, Kubernetes Operations at KAYAK'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/manager-kubernetes-operations-kayak-concord-jp7027ymstqr'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-19'
---

# Manager, Kubernetes Operations at KAYAK

- **Company:** KAYAK
- **Location:** Concord, NH
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-09-15
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-19
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/kayak/6f5b91fd-0516-4245-90fc-d5cd75d35770

## 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.

KAYAK is seeking a Manager, Kubernetes Operations to lead the team responsible for the reliability, scalability, and security of our container orchestration platform. In this role, you will combine deep technical expertise with a genuine passion for people leadership — guiding a team of platform engineers while shaping the strategy that keeps our containerized production environment running at global scale. You will be a key partner to engineering, security, and infrastructure teams, helping KAYAK move faster and more safely by building a platform your colleagues can depend on.

In this role you will:

- Own the technical roadmap and operational strategy for the Kubernetes platform, ensuring cluster reliability, scalability, and security across production and non-production environments.
- Lead a team of container platform engineers, taking full responsibility for hiring, performance management, and career development to build a high-performing, inclusive team.
- Deliver a continuously improving container platform by driving cluster lifecycle management — including version upgrades, node provisioning, capacity planning, and workload migration from legacy orchestration platforms.
- Coach engineers on Kubernetes best practices, container security, RBAC design, and operational excellence, fostering a culture of ownership and continuous learning.
- Collaborate closely with software engineering, security, and infrastructure teams to ensure containerized workloads are reliable, observable, and deployable with confidence.
- Drive the adoption of infrastructure-as-code and GitOps practices for cluster configuration and application deployment, reducing manual toil and improving consistency across environments.
- Design and enforce standards for Kubernetes observability — including metrics collection, alerting, and dashboarding — so the team can detect and resolve incidents quickly and conduct effective post-incident reviews.
- Hold the team to a high standard of operational excellence, including on-call practices, incident response, and blameless post-mortems.
- Collaborate with adjacent operations and engineering leaders to align the Kubernetes platform roadmap with broader infrastructure and product engineering goals.
- Advance the team's security posture by partnering with security teams on cluster hardening, network policy enforcement, and compliance requirements.

Please apply if you have:

- 8+ years of experience in SRE, DevOps, or platform/infrastructure engineering, with at least 3 years in an engineering leadership or management role.
- A proven track record of operating large-scale, 24/7 production Kubernetes environments, including cluster lifecycle management (upgrades, node provisioning, capacity planning) and workload migration from legacy container orchestration platforms.
- Deep, hands-on expertise with Kubernetes — including RBAC design, network policy, cluster hardening, and multi-environment operations spanning on-premises and cloud infrastructure.
- A strong technical foundation in both on premise and cloud infrastructure (GCP and/or AWS) and infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform and Ansible.
- Experience as a people manager with a demonstrated ability to hire, develop, and retain engineering talent, and a commitment to building inclusive, high-performing teams.
- Solid experience with modern observability tooling — such as Prometheus, Grafana, or equivalent — including alerting, dashboarding, and incident-driven tuning.
- Proficiency in at least one scripting or automation language (Python, Go, or Bash) to support infrastructure-as-code workflows and reduce operational toil.
- Excellent communication skills, with the ability to articulate a clear technical vision and work effectively with cross-functional engineering, security, and product teams.
- A degree in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

## 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
- Generous paid vacation + time off for your birthday
- 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
- Competitive retirement and health plans
- Free lunch 2 days per week
- Fun quarterly events such as boat trips, arcades, ski trips, Thursday happy hours, and more

## EQUITY ELIGIBLE

There are a variety of factors that go into determining a salary range, including but not limited to external market benchmark data, geographic location, and years of experience sought/required. The range for this Massachusetts based role is $175,000-$200,000, not inclusive of annual bonus and recurring RSU grants.

We offer a competitive base salary and benefits including: health benefits; flexible spending account; retirement benefits; life insurance; paid time off (including PTO, paid sick leave, medical leave, bereavement leave, floating holidays and paid holidays); and parental leave benefits.

## 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.

## 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)

## Other roles at KAYAK

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