SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
KAYAK, part of Booking Holdings, is the world's leading travel search engine. The Business Intelligence team is seeking a Senior Data Engineer to architect and operate the data backbone that serves as the single source of truth for the organization. This role focuses on building and maintaining KAYAK's business-critical reporting infrastructure that supports billing and company-wide analytics.
In this role, you will architect scalable data pipelines using Python, SQL, and orchestration tools (Rundeck/Airflow) to handle large-scale data volumes with high reliability. You'll design performant data models and optimize complex SQL queries for high-scale environments. A key responsibility is ensuring data reliability by building automated checks and alerts to catch errors early, keeping financial and operational reports accurate. You'll increase data access across the organization by automating repetitive tasks and building self-service tools. The role also involves experimenting with AI-assisted coding tools to accelerate development and enhance code quality, and translating business questions into practical, maintainable technical solutions through cross-functional collaboration.
The position is hybrid, requiring 3 days per week in the Berlin office.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 5+ years of proven experience in data engineering or analytics engineering within a data-centric environment
- Experience owning end-to-end data pipelines (ingest → transform → test → monitor)
- Strong SQL skills and familiarity with distributed/columnar/OLAP systems (Redshift, Trino, Vertica) and relational databases (MySQL, Postgres)
- Proficiency in Python with a software-engineering approach to building testable, maintainable code
- Experience with workflow orchestration and containerization (Airflow, Docker)
- Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills for investigating data issues
- Strong written and spoken English for effective cross-team communication
NICE-TO-HAVE:
- Stream processing or real-time systems (Kafka, Flink)
- Modern BI tooling (Looker, Superset)
- CI/CD and deployment automation (GitHub Actions)
- Web frameworks for internal tools (Django, Flask)
