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