Navan is building the next generation of intelligent travel experiences, where loyalty, personalization, and AI agents help travelers make better decisions before, during, and after every trip. As a Senior Software Engineer (Backend), you’ll drive the technical vision, architecture, and execution for the highly available, distributed services that form the backbone of Navan’s global travel and expense platform.
What You’ll Do:
- Architect Core Backend Systems: Design, build, and scale high-performance, fault-tolerant microservices that process millions of travel and expense transactions globally.
- Lead Technical Initiatives: Drive complex, cross-functional engineering projects from conception to deployment, making critical architectural trade-offs and setting technical standards for the wider backend organization.
- Optimize Performance & Reliability: Build robust APIs, asynchronous event-driven architectures, and scalable data pipelines with a relentless focus on low latency, high availability, and operational excellence.
- Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Partner closely with product management, engineering leadership, data, and platform teams to translate ambiguous business requirements into cohesive, enterprise-grade technical solutions.
- Raise the Engineering Bar: Champion maintainable code, thoughtful abstractions, and rigorous testing. Act as a force multiplier by mentoring engineers, leading architecture reviews, and fostering a culture of strong operational ownership.
- 6+ years of software engineering experience building and operating highly scalable, distributed production systems at an enterprise or global scale.
- Deep technical expertise in backend engineering stacks such as Java, TypeScript/Node.js, Python, or Go, alongside a strong mastery of engineering fundamentals.
- Extensive hands-on experience designing microservices, complex APIs, event-driven workflows (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ), caching strategies, and distributed databases.
- Proven track record of driving technical vision and leading the architecture of large, multi-team projects from inception through to successful production rollouts.
- Exceptional skills in systems observability, production debugging, and ensuring the reliability of critical Tier 1 services.
- Product mindset with the ability to balance immediate product delivery with long-term technical health and scalability.
- Experience with travel platforms, fintech, payment processing, or complex financial ledgers is a strong plus.
For roles with on-target-earnings (OTE), the pay range includes both base salary and target incentive compensation. Target incentive compensation for some roles may include a ramping draw period. Compensation is higher for those who exceed targets. Candidates may receive more information from the recruiter.
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Skills Required
- 6+ years of software engineering experience building and operating highly scalable, distributed production systems at enterprise or global scale
- Deep expertise in backend engineering using Java, TypeScript/Node.js, Python, or Go
- Hands-on experience designing microservices, complex APIs, event-driven workflows such as Kafka or RabbitMQ, caching strategies, and distributed databases
- Experience driving technical vision and leading architecture of large, multi-team projects from inception through production rollout
- Strong systems observability and production debugging skills
- Experience ensuring reliability of critical Tier 1 services
- Product mindset and ability to balance immediate delivery with long-term technical health and scalability
- Experience with travel platforms, fintech, payment processing, or complex financial ledgers
What the Team is Saying
What We Do
Navan (Nasdaq: NAVN) is the leading all-in-one business travel, payments, and expense management platform that makes travel easy for frequent travelers. From finding flights and hotels to automating expense reconciliation, with 24/7 support along the way, Navan delivers an intuitive experience travelers love and finance teams rely on. See how Navan customers benefit and learn more at navan.com.
Why Work With Us
At Navan, we’re never satisfied with the status quo, and we know breakthrough ideas come from diverse perspectives. We are committed to cultivating a workplace that reflects the diversity of the customers we serve while fostering leadership and innovation.
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Navan Offices
Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
In-person connections is the foundation of Navan, the connections forged through face-to-face interactions improve company culture and what we can achieve together. We operate on a hybrid working model, which we define as four days a week in-office.
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