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, Open Table, 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 Open Table 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.

At Open Table, 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.

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/Type Script focus
  .
• Major Initiative Leadership: Lead and support company‑wide Open Telemetry 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).

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,
  Type Script, and Node.js
  .
• Platform & Tooling Focus: Proven track record in Platform Engineering, Dev Ops, or building internal developer‑facing tools  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…