NOTE: This is a FULLY remote role, but the candidate must be within the European region to collaborate with their team, peers, and internal customers. You do not have to be in the specific country or city shown in this listing, but please only apply if you are physically based within the European region.
Hostaway is the market-leading SaaS scale-up transforming the vacation rental industry. With innovative solutions and partnerships with giants like Airbnb, VRBO, and Booking, we’re taking on the competition and winning. Leveraging our customer-centric core values, we consistently deliver results that encourage growth, learning, and innovation for our team, our customers, and the industry.
As a profitable and growing company, this role is necessitated by our continued growth. Check out more about our recent funding round of $365 million here.

ABOUT THE ROLE

Our platform powers a global customer base, handling millions of transactions, integrating with industry giants like Airbnb & Expedia, and driving the future of short term rental tech. With $365M recently invested, we’re scaling fast—breaking down our monolithic architecture, designing for next-level scalability, reliability, and innovation.

As Principal Engineer, you’ll be at the heart of this transformation, shaping how our platform evolves to support hundreds of integrations, complex workflows, and a rapidly growing customer base. If solving deep complex engineering challenges at scale excites you, let’s talk.

• 10+ years of experience in software development, with at least 2 years in a leadership role
• Expert-level proficiency in a Backend programming language, we use PHP
• Hands-on experience with completing the transition to microservices architectures and Domain-Driven Design
• Strong understanding of both relational (MySQL) as well as no-SQL data stores (like DynamoDB or ElasticSearch), data modeling and optimization techniques
• Knowledge of containerisation technologies (Docker, Kubernetes, Fargate) and the associated ecosystem
• Experience with event-streaming platforms like Kafka or Kinesis
• Extensive experience with AWS services and cloud architecture
• Proven track record of leading and mentoring cross-functional engineering teams
• Experience with Agile methodologies and CI/CD practices
• Solid understanding of software design patterns and architectural distributed computing principles
• Experience with working in SaaS product companies

NICE TO HAVE SKILLS FOR THIS ROLE:

• Experience with front-end engineering (e.g., ReactJS, NextJS, TailwindUI and similar)
• Experience with performance monitoring and optimisation tools
• Understanding of security best practices in web applications
• Experience with scalability challenges in high-growth environments
• Knowledge of machine learning and AI concepts
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation)
• The ability to exert Extreme Programming values & techniques to the team