Software Engineer (For independent contractors)

Software Engineer II owns the execution of technical elements in the Booking.com tech stack, products and processes. They are responsible for the implementation of technical solutions based on business requirements, they can estimate the effort and impact of the items they work on, and show a high quality of craft in what they deliver. A Software Engineer II understands the quality of test automation is as important as the production code and spends time refactoring both to ensure ease of change enabling a sustainable pace of development.

Software Engineer II are expected to work together with colleagues in other job roles to design, prioritise and implement technical tasks. Because the required technical skills and commercial knowledge can vary from one business unit to another, a Software Engineer II can focus on multiple types of work from product features to infrastructure automation, frameworks, tooling or services. In building software applications, the engineer is responsible to build software applications by using relevant development languages and applying knowledge of systems, services and tools appropriate for the business area; write readable and reusable code by applying standard patterns and using standard libraries; refactor and simplify code by introducing design patterns when necessary; ensure the quality of the application by following standard testing techniques and methods that adhere to the test strategy; maintain data security, integrity and quality by effectively following company standards and best practices.

For end-to-end system ownership, the engineer has sufficient knowledge to own a service end to end by actively monitoring application health and performance, setting and monitoring relevant metrics and act accordingly when violated; reduce business continuity risks and bus factor by applying state-of-the-art practices and tools, and writing the appropriate documentation such as runbooks and OpDocs; reduce risk and obtain customer feedback by using continuous delivery and experimentation frameworks; independently manage an application or service by working through deployment and operations in production.

For technical incident management, the engineer is responsible to address and resolve live production issues by mitigating the customer impact within SLA; improve the overall reliability of systems by producing long term solutions through root cause analysis; keep track of incidents by contributing to postmortem processes and logging live issues. For architectural guidance, the engineer has basic knowledge to advise product teams towards a technical solution that meets the functional, nonfunctional & architectural requirements by challenging the rationale for an application design and providing context in the wider architectural landscape; set a clear direction for a technical capability by evaluating and aligning the target architecture improvements, reframing architectural designs and decisions for varied stakeholders.

For software systems design, the engineer has sufficient knowledge to evaluate possible architecture solutions by taking into account cost, business requirements, technology requirements and emerging technologies; describe the implications of changing an existing system or adding a new system to a specific area, by having a broad, high-level understanding of the infrastructure and architecture of our systems; help grow the business and/or accelerate software development by applying engineering techniques (e.g. prototyping, spiking and vendor evaluation) and standards; meet business needs by designing solutions that meet current requirements and are adaptable for future enhancements.

For critical thinking, the engineer is responsible to systematically identify patterns and underlying issues in complex situations, and to find solutions by applying logical and analytical thinking; constructively evaluate and develop ideas, plans and solutions by reviewing them, objectively taking into account external knowledge, initiating 'SMART' improvements and articulating their rationale. For continuous quality and process improvement, the engineer has sufficient knowledge to identify opportunities for process, system and structural improvements (i.e performance gains) by examining and evaluating current process flows, methods and standards; design and implement relevant improvements by defining adapted/new process flows, standards, and practices that enable business performance.

For effective communication, the engineer is responsible to deliver clear, well-structured, and meaningful information to a target audience by using suitable communication mediums and language tailored to the audience; achieve mutually agreeable solutions by staying adaptable, communicating ideas in clear coherent language and practising active listening; ask relevant (follow-up) questions to properly engage with the speaker and really understand what they are saying, by applying listening and reflection techniques.

The tech stack includes Java and AWS.