Principal Engineer - Search

Overview

We’re On the Beach! Since 2003, we've been rewriting the rules of how people discover, book, and experience their perfect getaway. What started as connecting people to short-haul beach holidays has evolved into something much bigger - premium beach destinations, long-haul adventures, and vibrant city breaks – and that’s just the beginning of our story.

We send around two million holidaymakers on their dream breaks every year. And we're still growing.

Powered by our deep-rooted entrepreneurial spirit, proprietary tech, curiosity and our incredible people, we’re accelerating - delivering best in class technology, the ultimate holiday app, and experiences that keep our customers coming back for more.

As a Principal Engineer
, you’ll play a key role in transforming how millions of people discover, book, and experience travel through our platforms. This is an opportunity to drive technical innovation at scale while working with cutting-edge technologies across our full stack.

You’ll architect and influence technical decisions that extend beyond individual teams, shaping the foundation of our technology platform. Your work will directly impact the experiences of our customers while building scalable, reusable patterns that accelerate development across the business.

This role is pivotal in supporting our Head of Engineering to define and deliver the next phase of our technology strategy. You’ll help lead transformation initiatives, modernise legacy systems, and enhance our search functionality — ensuring performance, scalability, and innovation across the platform.

• Partner with the VP of Product Engineering to define the technical strategy, architectural direction, and transformation roadmap.
• Lead the design and optimisation of search systems, ensuring relevance, scalability, and reliability.
• Oversee the evolution of existing systems — maintaining and refactoring C# codebases while building and migrating services in Kotlin or Java.
• Champion engineering best practices across security, performance, testing, and continuous delivery.
• Provide architectural leadership across multiple teams, establishing standards and reusable patterns that scale.
• Mentor and empower engineers to grow their technical and leadership capabilities.
• Collaborate closely with Product, Data, and Platform teams to deliver complex change with measurable impact.
• Lead transformation and modernisation initiatives, balancing technical ambition with business priorities.

• Experienced in shaping technical direction and influencing engineering outcomes at scale.
• Skilled in designing and optimising search technologies (e.g., Elasticsearch, Solr, Open Search, or similar).
• Proficient in Kotlin or Java, and comfortable modernising C# legacy systems.
• Knowledgeable in distributed systems, cloud-native architectures (AWS preferred), and modern web technologies.
• Adept at leading teams through change and transformation, promoting collaboration and continuous improvement.
• A clear and confident communicator, capable of translating complex technical concepts for diverse audiences.

We’ll run a multiple stage interview process, one stage of which may be an in-person interview at our fabulous Aeroworks office in Manchester city centre.

We want to make sure everybody has the opportunity to perform at their best. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the interview process please let the Talent Acquisition team know and they will be happy to assist.

Our full time hours are 37.5 per week, but we don't have rigid working hours so you can find the working pattern that's right for you. We have core working hours between 10am - 4pm, so we can collaborate and enjoy the social side of work.

We also have hybrid working so we all work from home and from our Aeroworks office in Manchester City Centre. You’ll be in the office one day every two weeks, and you’re more than welcome to come in more if you’d like.

We might be biased but we think our colleagues are…