Staff Engineer - Platform Architecture

Staff Engineer

Location: London, UK - Hybrid position, In office 2 days per week

With millions of diners, 60,000+ restaurant partners and 25+ years of experience, OpenTable, part of Booking Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: BKNG), is an industry leader with a passion for helping restaurants thrive. Our world-class technology empowers restaurants to focus on what matters most – their team, their guests, and their bottom line – while enabling diners to discover and book the perfect restaurant for every occasion. 

Every employee at OpenTable has a tangible impact on what we do and how we do it. You’ll also be part of a global team and its portfolio of metasearch brands. Hospitality is all about taking care of others, and it defines our culture.

Our Team and Mission

At OpenTable, the Platform Architecture team is the engine that accelerates engineering globally. We design, build, and maintain the highly resilient and scalable internal platform that powers our engineers and, ultimately, the world's restaurants.

We are a high-impact, globally distributed team (US, London, Australia) and we're strategically expanding our London hub to strengthen our operations and impact in the UK time zone. Our core mission is to:

• Elevate the Developer Experience: Abstract away infrastructure complexity so engineers can focus on product delivery, not operational burden.
• Drive Autonomy: Provide developer-facing tools, libraries, and capabilities that enable teams to provision infrastructure and manage CI/CD with speed and autonomy.
• Shape the Future: Establish and champion modern architectural best practices across the entire organization.
• Act as the Bridge: Serve as a crucial advocate between product teams and infrastructure groups, ensuring the platform meets diverse and evolving needs.

Your Role

As a Staff Platform Engineer in London, you will be a hands-on technical leader, directly shaping the future of our internal platforms. This is a rare opportunity for greenfield development—you'll be designing and building new systems from scratch, not just maintaining legacy ones.

You will have end-to-end ownership over the entire lifecycle of our internal Node.js platform components and frameworks, which are vital to engineering teams worldwide.

Your key responsibilities will include:

• Technical Ownership: Design, build, and maintain our internal developer platforms and tooling with a Node.js/TypeScript focus.
• Major Initiative Leadership: Lead and support company-wide OpenTelemetry rollout, our major greenfield initiative to create the next generation of highly reliable observability and monitoring tools.
• Innovation: Evaluate emerging technologies, conduct research, and prototype innovative solutions to continuously enhance developer efficiency, reliability, and standardization.
• Collaboration: Work closely with Product and Infrastructure Engineering teams to drive the platform's strategic evolution, offering code reviews, technical guidance, and incident support.

Note on Support: This role involves participating in a low-volume, predictable on-call rotation, primarily providing weekday coverage during UK business hours (approx. every 3rd week), and a very low-incident weekend rotation (approx. every 6-7 weeks).

We're Excited About You If You Have

You are a seasoned engineer ready to take on the challenges and ownership that a Staff-level role demands.

• Deep Node.js Expertise: Strong engineering background with 5+ years of professional experience in JavaScript, TypeScript, and Node.js.
• Platform & Tooling Focus: Proven track record in Platform Engineering, DevOps, or building internal developer-facing tools at scale. You excel at creating intuitive, reusable designs, and writing well-architected, maintainable code.
• Strategic Communication: Strong communication and analytical skills, enabling you to clearly convey complex technical trade-offs, form strong technical opinions, and foster a collaborative, approachable working environment.
• Growth Mindset: A passion for technology coupled with an eagerness to constantly learn, adapt to new systems, and share your knowledge to mentor and grow the team.

Please consider applying even if you don’t meet every single requirement. We value potential and a desire to learn!

What Does Success Look Like?

In your first six months, you will collaborate with infrastructure engineering teams to design and begin execution on the next generation of our observability tooling, making a direct and tangible impact on every engineering team's visibility into our production systems globally.

Benefits and Perks 

• 5 weeks paid vacation + time off for your birthday (celebration day!)
• Pension plan contributions
• Private health & dental insurance
• 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
• Annual company-wide week off a year - the whole team fully recharges (and returns without a pile-up of work!)
• Paid parental leave
• Paid volunteer time
• Focus on your career growth:
  • Development Dollars (books/conferences)
  • Leadership development
  • Access to thousands of on-demand e-learning courses
• Travel Discounts
• Employee Resource Groups
• Income protection and life assurance
• Employee Assistance Program - including 24/7 GP & free legal advice
• Discounted gym membership
• Bike2Work
• Season ticket loan
• Social events & Thursday happy hours
• Free lunch 2 days per week

Work Environment & Flexibility

At OpenTable, we pride ourselves on fostering a global and dynamic work environment. As a team member with us, you will benefit from a schedule tailored to accommodate a global workforce operating across multiple time zones. While the majority of your responsibilities may align with conventional business hours, there will be instances where you are expected to manage communications - via calls, Slack messages, or emails - outside of regular working hours to effectively collaborate with international colleagues, respond to restaurant partners, and/or address urgent matters. OpenTable will always abide by and consider local laws and regulations.

Inclusion

We’re committed to creating a workplace where everyone feels they belong and can thrive. We know the best ideas come when we bring different voices to the table, so we're building a team as dynamic as the diners and restaurants we serve—and fostering a culture where everyone feels welcome to be themselves.

If you need adjustments during the application or interview process, or on the job, we’re here to support you. Please reach out to your recruiter to request any adjustments.

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