Hybrid Staff Backend Software Engineer – OpenAPI team

at Plusgrade

• Job title: Staff Backend Software Engineer – OpenAPI team
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Lead
• Salary: Not specified
• Degree requirement: Bachelor's Degree
• Tech skills: AWS, Cloud, Distributed Systems, Java, JUnit, Mockito, Spring, Spring Boot, SpringBoot
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Montreal, Canada

About the role

• Staff Software Engineer leading the evolution of the OpenAPI platform for enhancing travel experiences. Collaborating on API development, architecture, and partner integration strategies.

Responsibilities

• You’ll act as the technical lead for your team.
• You will own the full lifecycle of our new APIs, from design and versioning to rollout, deprecation, and continuous improvement, with a clear focus on reliability, performance, and partner experience.
• You’ll collaborate with Product and Partner Success to shape the OpenAPI roadmap, balancing new capabilities with platform hardening and scalability.
• Over 12–18 months, your impact will be visible in stronger partner adoption, higher API reliability, and faster time-to-integration for OTAs and TMCs.
• You will define and evolve the architecture of our OpenAPI platform, ensuring it scales to support new products, partners, and traffic levels.
• Establish and champion API design standards (OpenAPI specifications, versioning, backward compatibility) across teams building on the Indirect Booking Ecosystem.
• Lead complex, cross-team initiatives such as shared libraries, common integration patterns, and reliability improvements that span multiple services and squads.
• Own key non-functional outcomes for our APIs, including latency, availability, error rates, and partner integration success.
• Partner directly with OTAs and TMCs’ technical teams to understand their needs, guide integrations, and turn their feedback into improvements to our platform and documentation.

Requirements

• 8+ years of professional experience designing and building scalable software solutions in an Agile/Scrum environment.
• Proven experience leading technical discussions and driving decisions that balance delivery speed, maintainability, and long-term system health.
• Deep understanding of Java (Spring Boot), cloud deployments (preferably AWS), and distributed system design.
• A strong understanding of testing and the test pyramid, as well as pipelines and feedback loops, with a focus on quality delivery (JUnit, Mockito).
• Solid computer science fundamentals, including data structures, algorithms, system design, and performance optimization.
• Extensive experience designing and evolving public- or partner-facing APIs, ideally using OpenAPI/Swagger, with a strong focus on usability, consistency, and backward compatibility.
• Hands-on experience with API platforms and integration patterns (e.g., API gateways, OAuth2, API keys, rate limiting, webhooks vs. polling, idempotency, resiliency patterns).
• Proven track record leading multi-team or multi-service architectural initiatives, such as API redesigns, large refactors, or migrations in distributed systems.
• Experience working directly with external partners’ or enterprise customers’ engineering teams to deliver integrations or platform capabilities.
• Travel, airline, e-commerce, or other highly regulated domain experience is a plus, especially if you’ve worked with complex transactional systems.
• Demonstrated experience mentoring developers, performing code reviews, and improving team velocity and quality metrics.
• A Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience.

Benefits

• RRSP/401(k) matching
• Comprehensive health plans
• Flexible paid time off
• Annual upgrade credit
• Annual physical wellness credit
• Annual mental wellness credit
• Flexibility to work remotely
• Parental leave top-up
• Adventure Pass