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Design and scale highly available backend microservices processing global travel and expense transactions. Lead cross-functional technical initiatives, establish architecture and engineering standards, optimize APIs and event-driven systems, and ensure reliability through observability and production debugging. Mentor engineers, lead architecture reviews, and balance product delivery with long-term scalability and technical health.
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.
The posted pay range represents the anticipated low and high end of the compensation for this position and is subject to change based on business need. To determine a successful candidate’s starting pay, we carefully consider a variety of factors, including primary work location, an evaluation of the candidate’s skills and experience, market demands, and internal parity.
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.
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.
Pay Range
$113,400—$252,000 USD
Navan uses AI-assisted Automated Employment Decision Tool (Metaview) to assist with evaluating resumes against job qualifications for this role. All final decisions are made by human recruiters and hiring managers.
Human oversight: Metaview does not automatically reject candidates or make final hiring decisions. Our recruiters and hiring managers review all outputs and make the final hiring decision regarding every application.
Your rights: If you prefer to have your application reviewed without AI assistance, you may request a human evaluation by entering your email here. Your decision to do so will not affect how your candidacy is evaluated.
Please refer to our Candidate Privacy Notice for more information about our processing of personal data, and your rights.
Navan Palo Alto, California, USA Office
3045 Park Blvd, Palo Alto, CA, United States, 94304
Navan San Francisco, California, USA Office
181 Fremont St. 23rd Floor , San Francisco, CA, United States, 94105
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