Backend Engineer With Flight Experience (Remote)

Who We Are

We are a YC-backed startup with $8M+ raised, led by repeat founders who’ve built and scaled successful companies before. Our mission is ambitious: we’re building deeply integrated AI systems that understand, reason, and act to solve real-world problems in travel and transport. We’re not another “move fast and burn out” shop. We believe peak productivity comes when humans have psychological safety, time to sleep, move, eat well, and be understood. That’s the culture we’re building. We don’t believe in overwork or equating hours with outcomes. What matters is results tied to business and customer outcomes—nothing else.

What makes us different:
We don’t worship grind culture. We believe peak output comes when people are well-rested, strong, loved, safe, and understood.
Sleep > All-nighters
Excercise & health > Burnout & “hustle”
Psychological safety > Fear & politics
Because humans at their best → happy, motivated, and productive

Location: Remote okay, but Boulder, CO preferred (2-3 days on site ideally)

About This Role

We are hiring a Senior Backend Engineer to power modern travel search, booking, and management experiences across airfare, accommodation, and related services. You will design and implement backend services that integrate with GDS, NDC, and other travel APIs, aggregating fares, schedules, and inventory from multiple providers into a unified platform. Our systems deliver fast, reliable search and booking capabilities, giving travelers and partners a streamlined, efficient experience. You will work with Go/Golang, distributed systems, and large-scale integrations to build robust and scalable services. You will apply strong engineering practices to ensure systems are secure, high-performance, and resilient. As we expand coverage and add partners, you will adapt quickly, iterate on features, and focus on delivering measurable impact for our customers in the travel and transport industries.

What You’ll Do

• Build the core systems that power travel search, booking, and management.

• Design, build, and maintain robust backend services in Go/Golang with a focus on scalability, reliability, and performance.

• Integrate with GDS, NDC, and other third-party travel APIs, handling search, booking, and post-booking workflows for flights, hotels, and related services.

• Apply strong engineering principles (modularity, testing, error handling, monitoring) to ensure resilience against external API dependencies.

• Collaborate closely with product and leadership to ensure backend capabilities align directly with customer and business needs.

• Document key decisions and integration approaches, ensuring clarity for current and future teammates.

• Take full ownership of outcomes in a startup environment: small team collaboration, rapid iteration, and shipping usable systems.

• Work in a lightweight agile framework shaped by your input (no dogma, no purist process), with daily stand-ups and project coordination between you, the COO, and three other engineers (AI, frontend and backend).

• Take strategic and product guidance from a cofounder who will be in-office.

• The COO supports your growth and ensures you have what you need to succeed, while the cofounders focus on product excellence.

What We’re Looking For

• Prior experience with travel and Global Distribution System (GDS) is experience REQUIRED

• Strong, validated expertise in software engineering with expertise in shipping production systems from beginning to end.

• Deep expertise in Go/Golang with a demonstrated 3 years of backend engineering experience.

• Strong understanding of distributed systems, concurrency, and microservices.

• Experience working with databases, especially MySQL.

• Proven ability to pick up new technologies quickly and apply them pragmatically.

• Ability to turn messy, ambiguous problems into solvable projects, with clear scoping, regular updates, and visible progress for stakeholders

• Excellent communication: clearly defines projects, can explain assumptions, trade-offs, and progress clearly.

Bonus Points

• Familiarity with Vercel, Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud platforms (AWS/GCP).

• Experience in high-growth startups.

• Previous founders or founding engineers We don’t believe in overwork or equating hours with outcomes. What matters is results tied to business and customer outcomes—nothing else.

Compensation and Growth

$150,000 + Equity (.1%-.75%) Health, Dental, and Vision Insurance + Dependents Four Weeks Paid Time Off (We try to encourage you to take time off)
Opportunity to grow in high-level IC or Leadership position as you prefer (no pay discrimination between the two)

Interview Process At Humoniq

We design hiring to be fair, predictive, and respectful of your time. You’ll have the chance to show what you can do on your own terms, choosing when and where, so you’re able to perform at your best.

The data is clear: resumes are one of the weakest predictors of job performance (Hunter & Schmidt’s meta-analysis, ~0.1–0.2 correlation). They’re noisy, biased toward pedigree, and reward formatting skills. That’s why we combine structured interviews with research-backed assessments.

• Fairness: Interviews can sometimes reward confidence over skill. Assessments give every candidate the same chance to show their abilities, leveling the playing field.

• Effectiveness: Decades of studies show assessments are stronger predictors of job success than interviews alone. They help us focus on real skills, not just first impressions.

• For You: This means you won’t be judged on your resume, background, accent, or personality quirks, but on what really matters is your ability to do the work.

There will be four parts to the interview: a 45 Minute Technical assessment, a 45 Minute Reasoning Assessment, 45 remote interview, 4-5-hour in-person interview.

Our entire process will take less than 8 hours, and will not require any 'take-home’ work tests or Leet code crap from you. We will try to mimic the real world you will do as much as possible. There will be an in-person component as part of the last interview.