This role is not open to visa sponsorship or transfer of visa sponsorship including those on OPT and STEM-EXT OPT, nor is it available to work corp-to-corp.

For the Lonely Planet website click here. Curious how Lonely Planet fits into Red Ventures? Click here.

Lonely Planet has been helping people explore the world for over 50 years. While our guidebooks have inspired generations of travelers, we are now building a new generation of digital products and experiences that transform how people discover, plan, and experience travel.

As a Senior Software Engineer on the Services team, you will play a key role in shaping the architecture and evolution of the Elixir services that power Lonely Planet’s newly launched mobile app, its iconic website, and an emerging travel platform used by millions of travelers worldwide. You will partner closely with product, design, and engineering leadership to build scalable services, guide technical decisions, and mentor other engineers while delivering high-impact solutions.

• Design and build scalable, reliable Elixir services that power core product experiences.
• Own the technical design and long-term evolution of key backend services, ensuring scalability, reliability, and operational excellence.
• Lead architectural decisions across services, driving consistent patterns for distributed systems, event-driven communication, and service reliability.
• Collaborate with product managers, designers, and engineers to design and deliver new product capabilities.
• Ensure systems are designed for scalability, maintainability, and performance.
• Drive improvements in system reliability, observability, and operational excellence.
• Identify and resolve production bottlenecks, performance issues, and system failures.
• Participate in and influence engineering standards, architecture discussions, and technical roadmaps.
• Mentor engineers through code reviews, technical guidance, and knowledge sharing.
• Contribute to the evolution of our cloud infrastructure and developer tooling.
• Lead root cause analysis for complex production issues and implement long-term fixes.
• Advocate for security, testing, and operational best practices throughout the development lifecycle.
• Stay current with emerging technologies and help guide pragmatic adoption of new tools and approaches.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of professional backend engineering experience.
• Significant experience developing production systems in Elixir.
• Strong experience designing and operating distributed backend systems.
• Experience designing and maintaining GraphQL and RESTful APIs.
• Strong understanding of software design principles, system architecture, and performance optimization.
• Experience building and operating cloud-native systems on AWS.
• Experience implementing event-driven architectures and asynchronous processing patterns.
• Strong experience with PostgreSQL and relational data modeling, including query optimization and performance tuning.
• Experience implementing observability practices, including metrics, logging, and monitoring.
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical initiatives and influence architectural decisions.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills across engineering, product, and leadership.
• Ability to mentor engineers and elevate overall team engineering practices.
• Product-oriented mindset and understanding of how engineering decisions impact user experience.
• Experience scaling high-traffic distributed systems in production environments.
• Experience with containerization and orchestration technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.

• Experience building event-driven systems with AWS services such as EventBridge, SNS, or SQS.
• Experience designing platform-level services or internal developer tooling.
• Experience with additional backend languages such as Go, Python, or similar.
• Familiarity with modern frontend architectures and full-stack product development.

Compensation:

This range reflects total cash compensation, which may include base salary only or base salary plus target bonus, depending on the role. Where eligible, equity may also be offered separately and not included below. Actual compensation varies based on location, experience, and qualifications.

• Total Cash Compensation Range: $100,000-$160,000

Additionally, the following benefits are provided by Red Ventures, subject to eligibility requirements.

• Health Insurance Coverage (medical, dental, and vision)
• Life Insurance
• Short and Long-Term Disability Insurance
• Flexible Spending Accounts
• Holiday Pay
• 401(k) with match
• Employee Assistance Program
• Paid Parental Bonding Benefit Program
• Flexible Paid Time Off (PTO): We believe time to rest and recharge is essential.  That’s why we offer a generous and flexible PTO policy.  Full-time employees accrue 20 days of PTO for a full calendar year annually, with an increase to 25 days after five years of service.

Who We Are:

Red Ventures is a global portfolio of high-growth companies — spanning several U.S. businesses, a joint venture in the health services industry, and strategic investments in Europe. Their businesses include The Points Guy, Lonely Planet, Bankrate, the Allconnect Platform, RV Home Client Growth, RV Growth & Transformation, Sage Home Loans Corporation, and more. Across the portfolio, Red Ventures businesses deliver seamless digital experiences for consumers, help Fortune 100 clients solve large-scale digital growth challenges, and create world-class experiences and opportunities for employees. Learn more at redventures.com and follow @RedVentures on LinkedIn and Instagram.

At Red Ventures, we believe diverse, inclusive teams are better. To help you better understand our core values and beliefs, we encourage you to watch this brief YouTube video: Our Belief Statements. This will give you insight into the principles that guide our work and our commitment to fostering an inclusive environment.

Red Ventures is an equal opportunity employer that does not discriminate against any employee or applicant because of race, creed, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or any other basis protected by law. Employment at Red Ventures is based solely on a person's merit and qualifications. 

We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to qualified individuals with disabilities. This includes providing reasonable accommodation where appropriate. Should you require a reasonable accommodation to apply or participate in the job application or interview process, please contact accommodation@redventures.com. 

If you are based in California, we encourage you to read this important information for California residents linked here.

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