VR - Backend Node Engineer

About VacationRenter

VacationRenter is the fastest-growing vacation rental search engine. We love vacation rentals, but not how time-consuming and complex it can be to find the right one. So we reimagined a better way. We eliminated the need to search across several different sites and scroll through pages of irrelevant results just to find the perfect home away from home. We bring all the lodging options from the leading travel sites together in one place and showcase only the best results for each traveler.

VacationRenter was founded in 2018 and by 2020 had already driven over $1 billion in gross bookings, making us not only one of the fastest-growing websites across any industry but also the fastest-growing travel company ever. Due to this strong growth, VacationRenter was named to SimilarWeb's 100 fast-growing websites of 2020 and 2024.

VacationRenter was born inside Wilbur Labs, a Miami-based startup studio. Founded by ex-Googlers, VacationRenter combines an intuitive user experience with data-driven automation to help travelers find the perfect vacation rental.

About This Role

VacationRenter is actively seeking a talented Backend Engineer to join our engineering organization. Our backend systems are the backbone of the traveler experience, and this role plays a critical part in scaling our platform to support millions of users and high-volume transactions.

As a Backend Engineer, you’ll work closely with product, engineering, and leadership to build the services and APIs that power our platform. You’ll help ensure high performance, reliability, and scalability, and contribute to the architecture and direction of our systems. This is a high-impact role where you'll have real ownership and the ability to shape engineering culture.

This position reports directly to the Head of Engineering.

Role & Responsibilities:

Design, architect, and implement robust APIs and services using Node.js, PostgreSQL, and Redis

Optimize complex SQL queries and schemas to ensure lightning-fast performance across large datasets

Tackle high-scale engineering challenges to ensure reliability and efficiency under heavy traffic

Collaborate cross-functionally with product, engineering, and leadership teams on backend features

Proactively identify and resolve technical debt; lead refactoring projects to future-proof our stack

Participate in team standups, code reviews, and deployment processes

Mentor and support other engineers, helping to elevate team-wide technical excellence

Take ownership of projects and drive initiatives from concept to production

Requirements/Qualifications:

3+ years of backend software engineering experience

Strong experience with Node.js and PostgreSQL (or equivalent relational databases)

Strong SQL skills — able to write, debug, and optimize complex queries on large datasets

Experience working on high-volume, consumer-facing platforms

Solid understanding of backend architecture, distributed systems, and scalability principles

Experience with DevOps practices and cloud infrastructure (preferably Google Cloud or AWS), including CI/CD, monitoring, and infrastructure as code

Entrepreneurial mindset with a self-driven, ownership mentality

Excellent collaboration and communication skills

Nice To Have:

Experience in the travel, marketplace, or e-commerce space

Experience scaling systems to millions of daily users

Experience building and deploying machine learning models using Vertex AI or similar platforms (e.g., SageMaker, Azure ML)

Contributions to open-source projects or tech communities

Benefits & Perks:

Competitive salary + equity

Top-tier laptop provided

100% company-paid health benefits for base plan coverage, with the option to upgrade to higher-tier plans

401(k) with company match

Unlimited, guilt-free vacation days

Annual wellness stipend (gym + other wellness activities)

Monthly house cleaning stipend

Annual travel allowance

Monthly cell phone & internet usage stipend

Charity donation company match

Employee referral bonus

Team offsites/activities