Senior Backend Software Engineer, Flights

About the Position

Location: New York, NY

Department: Engineering

Navan has transformed the corporate travel, payment, and expense landscape by consistently prioritizing user needs. As a Senior Backend Software Engineer in the Flights group, you’ll play an essential part in building and scaling the next-generation flight platform, Navan’s flagship product that drives global business growth. This is a high-scale, complex environment where your work will impact customers worldwide. You’ll solve challenging problems, collaborate with engineers, product managers, and designers across the globe, and contribute to a platform trusted by major enterprises.

Responsibilities

• Build at Scale: Design and develop robust, high-performance features and core services that support the company’s flagship product and serve a global customer base.
• Solve Complex Problems: Apply deep technical expertise and creativity to address large-scale engineering challenges, driving improvements in reliability, performance, and user experience.
• Deliver Customer-Facing Solutions: Take end-to-end ownership of features-from design and development to deployment and operational support-ensuring exceptional quality and value for users.
• Collaborate Across Teams: Work effectively as part of a global, cross-functional team, partnering with fellow engineers, product managers, designers, and business leaders to deliver impactful solutions and elevate team performance.
• Contribute to Engineering Culture: Champion best practices in code quality, scalability, documentation, monitoring, and testing, fostering a culture of technical excellence, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Learn and Grow: Stay engaged with new technologies and industry trends, bringing a growth mindset and a passion for delivering elegant solutions to complex problems.

Requirements

• 6+ years of experience building and scaling complex systems in fast-paced, high-growth, or large-scale environments (open to exceptional candidates with less experience)
• Hands-on experience developing and maintaining consumer-facing or core business products at scale
• Proficiency in Java and Spring Boot, with solid understanding of JVM performance and optimization
• Strong experience with distributed systems, micro-services, and API design, including practical expertise with AWS or other cloud platforms
• Ownership mentality with a record of delivering production-quality, maintainable code, and supporting features post-release through monitoring and troubleshooting
• Collaborative team player able to work effectively with global, cross-functional partners
• Commitment to engineering best practices in testing, documentation, scalability, and code quality
• Problem-solving mindset with a passion for tackling technically demanding and customer-impacting challenges
• Domain knowledge in the travel industry (flights, bookings, or inventory management) is a strong plus
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent hands-on experience

We Offer

• Competitive salary range: $113,400-$252,000 USD
• Comprehensive benefits program designed to support your well-being, financial security, and life outside of work
• Opportunities for professional growth and development
• Collaborative and inclusive work environment

About the Company

Navan (Nasdaq: NAVN) is the global AI-powered business travel and expense 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.

Culture of Excellence

Our team is our competitive edge - a high-performance group of smart, driven people committed to winning together. This dedication to excellence is why we’ve been recognized as a Best Place to Work by Built In (2023–2026), a G2 Best Global Software Company (2025–2026), Forbes Cloud 100 (2022–2025), and CNBC Disruptor 50 (2022–2025). At Navan, we provide an environment where top talent excels, offering the autonomy and fast-paced trajectory needed to build a defining career and do the best work of your life.

Equal Opportunity

Navan is an equal opportunity employer. We make all employment decisions based solely on merit. We provide equal employment opportunity to all applicants and employees without discrimination on the bases of race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We prohibit any such discrimination or harassment. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including hiring.