Software Engineer II - Sofia

We are Despegar, part of the Prosus ecosystem, and for over 25 years we have been revolutionizing travel in Latin America ✈️. We build technology that transforms experiences and connects millions of people with their travel dreams. We are looking for talent that thinks big (10x), acts autonomously, and achieves real results. If you are passionate about innovation, learn quickly, and build on a team, this is the place for you

We are currently looking for Backend Engineers to join our technology team focused on SOFIA — our AI platform applied to the travel industry. Although the search is for Software Engineer II, we are open to SEI and SEIII.

What will be the main responsibilities within the role?

• Develop, build, and evolve backend services that enhance the conversational and shopping experience within SOFIA.
• Participate in technical architecture decisions with a focus on scalability, flexibility, and iteration speed in a highly dynamic environment.
• Own the solutions developed, being responsible for their entire lifecycle: design, development, deployment, maintenance, and production impact.
• Integrate multiple internal services and external APIs to create complete user scenarios within the travel ecosystem.
• Actively work on developing AI capabilities, collaborating on prompt engineering, tool development, and conversational flows.
• Ensure code quality by promoting clean, maintainable, and product-oriented solutions that adhere to best practices and engineering standards.
• Identify opportunities to improve user experience and propose innovative technical solutions.
• Participate in code reviews and technical discussions, fostering continuous improvement within the team.
• Monitor and optimize service behavior, ensuring good performance and reliability.
• Collaborate closely with product, UX, and frontend teams to create comprehensive end-to-end solutions.
• Be willing to participate in frontend development when necessary, contributing to the complete user experience. What are we looking for?
• +5 years of experience developing backend applications.
• Experience with JVM-based languages such as Java or Scala.
• Experience with modern frontend languages (e.g., React) or willingness to learn and take on end-to-end initiatives is a plus.
• Knowledge of relational and non-relational databases.
• Good understanding of API design and service architecture.
• Ability to work in a changing environment with a focus on rapid iteration and continuous learning.
• Interest in working with Artificial Intelligence, prompting, and conversational systems.

Nice to have:

• Familiarity with microservices architecture.
• Interest or previous experience with AI-powered products. What do we offer?
• Real autonomy in decision-making and the opportunity to make an impact from day one
• A culture of continuous learning: we fail fast, learn, and scale
• A diverse, collaborative team without internal barriers
• Growth opportunities within a global ecosystem (Prosus) We value responsibility, innovation, and focus on people.

Travel transforms you, working at Despegar does too ✈️