Lead Software Engineer

Salary £74,126 - £92,658 + Benefits + Bonus

Office Based

Location: Newingreen, Kent

We care deeply about inclusive working practices and diverse teams. If you'd prefer to work part-time or as a job-share, we'll facilitate this wherever we can - whether to help you meet other commitments or to help you strike a great work-life balance. 

About

We’re looking for a Lead Engineer specialising in backend development, who will steer and guide our mission to create the most seamless and flexible checkout experience in travel, empowering customers with their preferred payment options, ensuring secure bookings, and enabling our teams to deploy new features quickly.

Our primary mission revolves around simplifying travel, allowing our customers to make the most of their precious holiday time. Payments are a critical part of that journey, and we’re dedicated to creating a frictionless checkout and transaction experience. This year, we’ve made significant advancements in our payment platform, including introducing alternative payment methods to offer customers greater flexibility. 

We’re continuing to focus our efforts on evolving our payment architecture, ensuring scalability, reliability and compliance. You’ll have the exciting opportunity to drive innovation and contribute to the technical direction of payment systems that are integral to our customer journey. Your expertise will directly impact how our customers interact with us when booking and paying for their extras.

A Lead Engineer at Holiday Extras is the most senior technical contributor in the squad. You will lead by example, taking ownership of complex tasks, reviewing code, and contributing to key projects while setting a high standard for technical excellence. You’ll support and mentor the engineers in your squad, and in turn be supported by an engineering leadership function that includes Principal Engineers and Solutions Architects, who provide strategic guidance and foster collaboration across teams.

The Role

By joining our team you’ll:

• Define and establish best practices for Javascript based (Node.JS & Typescript) backend development and payment systems
• Lead the technical direction of our multi-disciplined payments team
• Be the point of technical collaboration and decision-making for the team
• Collaborate closely with Product Managers, Delivery Managers and Engineers, as well as our Finance, Fraud and Data teams and our third-party partner Payment Service Providers
• Mentor and support your fellow engineers in the Payment team, fostering professional growth
• Lead our efforts to optimise and scale our payment platform to meet customer needs
• Champion technical excellence while ensuring compliance with industry standards and regulations
• Keep abreast of changes to the payment industry, highlighting opportunities and risks for future growth
• Represent the effort and achievement of the team in regular demos and updates to stakeholders
• Provide inspirational leadership to the engineering team, driving consistent high-quality results and technical innovation.
• Have 10% of your time dedicated to learning and development

What you can bring to our team: 

• Extensive experience in backend development, with expertise in building scalable, reliable and secure systems
• Experience leading a team of engineers whilst collaborating with Product and Delivery teams
• A track record of developing others through technical leadership and mentorship
• A balance between technical innovation and pragmatism, ensuring efficient project progress whilst meeting business objectives
• An outcome-driven approach, able to tell us how you’ve improved key metrics for payment systems or platforms
• Expert communication skills, understanding the impact of your communication style, adapting to simple, clear and transparent communication
• Stakeholder management; working with a variety of technical and non-technical teams
• Proactiveness to identify new opportunities and technologies to enhance our payment platform
• A passion for sharing your knowledge and expertise internally and externally
• It would be great if you have knowledge of payment systems, including payment service providers, alternative payment methods and industry standards (like PCI-DSS and Payment Services Directives)

Everyone’s career path is individual and different, so this is just a guide. If your experience doesn't precisely match this, you’re encouraged to apply so that we can discover your unique talents!

How we hire for this role

We know your time is precious, so we keep our recruitment process as quick and easy as possible. If we believe you might be a match for a job you’ve applied for, you’ll enter our hiring process as follows:

• Initial conversation with our Tech Recruitment Specialist
• On site interview with one of our Engineering Managers & Tech Leads, also talking through a technical problem 
• Meet Rob, our CTO

Cultivating a diverse and inclusive culture is paramount for us. 

Recognising we are all different, if for whatever reason you need us to adapt the process, please get in touch via recruitment@holidayextras.com.

Applications close: Monday 10th February 2025

We reserve the right to close this job before the closing date due to a high volume of applications, please ensure you submit your application as soon as possible to be considered. 

Why choose Holiday Extras?

We believe that holidays are the most precious time of all, so we create products, tech and services that make travel and holidays memorable and fun. We’re on a mission to be the only place to go for your holiday extras, offering unparalleled choice, value and service, turning our customers’ ordinary trips into extraordinarily good times.
At Holiday Extras we’re creating a workplace where everyone can thrive, build their careers and reach their limitless potential. By joining our team, you can enjoy a world of benefits to enhance your lifestyle and wellbeing, including 25 days plus your birthday off, profit share, enhanced parental leave, discounted gym memberships and more! Learn more about our culture and benefits.