Skyscanner is hiring a

Principal Software Engineer, Distributed Systems

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Rewarding. Energising. Open.

We need your talent and expertise to help us do something great for our travellers: make booking stays and journeys more sustainable and straightforward. This involves technical challenges and the latest technology, from machine learning and cloud services to extraordinary APIs.

As a Principal Software Engineer in distributed systems, you'll typically be working in Java or Python, and with a technology stack that includes AWS, Kubernetes, Spark, Airflow, gRPC, New Relic and more.

This role sits within our Advertising and Partner Analytics space and we are looking for someone with extensive AdTech experience to help lead the evolution of our advertising platform.  Some of the challenges we are facing in the advertising domain are related to efficient delivery of our inventory, campaign forecasting, handling audiences, etc.

You’ll be someone that can lead or influence a team in a deep problem space or a number of teams across a broader area. You’re someone that proactively takes on ambiguous and impactful problems to deliver the right result for the strategy of the organisation.

Key Deliverables:

  • Technical and Feature Roadmap Partnership: Collaborate to define technical and feature roadmaps, aligning with overall business strategy.
  • Manageable Deliverables: Break down solutions into manageable, achievable deliverables and ensure timely deployment.
  • Strategic Contribution: Actively contribute to the company's broader strategy and technical roadmap.
  • Innovative Problem Solving: Design and build solutions for complex and ambiguous problems independently.
  • Mentorship and Guidance: Mentor and guide teams to create scalable, cost-effective solutions, adhering to engineering principles and reusing existing solutions when possible.
  • Anticipate Future Needs: Anticipate future requirements and risks, aligning with the long-term technical roadmap.
  • Engineering Health: Guide teams to maintain engineering health, focusing on creating simple systems and reducing chaos.
  • Technical Leadership: Lead your team’s technical direction to ensure delivery of business value.
  • Incident Data Sharing: Ensure incident data is proactively shared with actionable recommendations across the Engineering community.
  • Knowledge Sharing: Seek out and apply shared learnings from others, helping your team to implement them effectively.



We work as a global team, but in squads of 6 to 12 engineers and using Agile/Lean methodology. We don't need you to be a master in all the details of Scrum or Kanban, but you will be able to support your team in establishing sustainable flow to deliver on their projects. Sometimes this will mean being able to break down shared milestones across multiple teams in multiple locations, sometimes it will mean influencing your peers' thinking, and sometimes it will mean helping ensure the success of others by mentoring and coaching them effectively.

Skyscanner is a hybrid working company and most roles can be either Full Time or Part Time. We believe when people meet regularly in person, we are better able to innovate, learn, collaborate and inspire. We ask people to be in the office on average 8 days per month.

Already a global leader in travel, we want to elevate the way we work to a whole other level. In return, you’ll get meaningful things like medical insurance, headspace subscriptions, a home office allowance and the option to buy more holiday. You’ll have the opportunity to work from any country for 4 weeks a year, and 30 days in our other global offices. Everything, in other words, to help you relax and give your best.

For more details on Engineering at Skyscanner, check our Engineering Blog and follow Skyscanner Engineering on Twitter.

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