Staff Software Engineer (Flights)

Join Navan, a fast-growing startup in the travel industry, as a Staff Software Engineer in the Flights group. In this role, you will be responsible for building and scaling Navan's flagship flight platform, collaborating with engineers, product managers, and designers globally. You will also provide technical leadership and mentorship to other engineers, champion a product mindset, and elevate the engineering culture. Benefits include parental leave, healthcare, flexible vacation, and a 401k retirement plan.

• Act as a prolific individual contributor while providing technical leadership and mentorship to engineers across the team. Design and develop robust, high-performance architecture and services that support our flagship product globally.
• Cultivate a deep understanding of our customers' needs and strive for excellence in the customer experience, translating user insights into seamless, high-performance technical realities.
• Own critical features end-to-end. Collaborate closely with product managers and designers, ship high-impact features, monitor their operational health, and ensure key technical decisions directly drive exceptional quality, user value, and positive business outcomes.
• 10+ years of experience building and scaling complex systems in fast-paced, high-growth, or large-scale environments
• A strong product mindset with genuine empathy for the user and a relentless drive to deliver an exceptional customer experience
• Ownership mentality with a record of delivering production-quality, maintainable code, and supporting features post-release through monitoring and troubleshooting
• Collaborative team player able to work effectively with global, cross-functional partners
• In-depth experience with Java, Spring Boot, and AWS (or other cloud provider), including a deep understanding of JVM performance, optimization, and cloud architecture
• Commitment to engineering excellence across the software development lifecycle
• Domain knowledge in the travel industry (flights, bookings, or inventory management) is a strong plus
• A proven track record as a hands-on coder who balances high-volume, high-quality code output with technical leadership
• Problem-solving mindset with a passion for tackling technically demanding and customer-impacting challenges
• Strong expertise in distributed systems, microservices, and API design
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent hands-on experience
• Demonstrated ability to operate comfortably in highly ambiguous environments, thinking creatively to develop and implement solutions