Engineering Manager - Booking Platform

Engineering Manager - Booking Platform This is a Toronto based hybrid 2x/week in office position. About OpenTable With millions of diners, 60,000+ restaurant partners and 25+ years of experience, OpenTable, part of Booking Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: BKNG), is an industry leader with a passion for helping restaurants thrive. Our world-class technology empowers restaurants to focus on what matters most – their team, their guests, and their bottom line – while enabling diners to discover and book the perfect restaurant for every occasion. Every employee at OpenTable has a tangible impact on what we do and how we do it. You’ll also be part of a global team and its portfolio of metasearch brands. Hospitality is all about taking care of others, and it defines our culture. The Role We are looking for an Engineering Manager to lead critical backend engineering teams that power the core of OpenTable’s Diner Platform. These teams sit at the center of the platform. The availability system powers fast and reliable search across a global network of inventory. The reservations system owns the full booking lifecycle, from slot locking through confirmations, changes, payments and downstream events. This is a hands-on leadership role that combines people leadership with strong technical ownership. You will shape architecture, guide execution, and develop engineers while working in a complex, high scale distributed systems environment. What You Will Do Build and lead a high performing team: Create a strong and inclusive team culture grounded in trust, accountability, and clear expectations. Coach engineers across all levels, with a focus on developing senior and staff level talent. Provide direct and actionable feedback, manage performance proactively, and hire and retain exceptional engineers and future leaders. Own technical direction and quality: Set technical direction across core backend systems in partnership with senior engineers. Drive architectural decisions across distributed systems, APIs, data models, and event driven pipelines. Stay close to the systems by reviewing designs, challenging assumptions, and guiding tradeoffs. Establish and maintain high standards for reliability, scalability, and operational excellence. Drive delivery and business impact: Translate product goals into clear engineering priorities and execution plans. Partner closely with Product and Design to reduce ambiguity and make sound decisions. Establish a strong operating rhythm for planning, execution, and continuous improvement. Surface risks early and ensure issues are resolved effectively. Operate and scale critical systems: Own the full lifecycle from design and development through deployment and operation. Lead through production incidents with clarity and urgency, and ensure follow through strengthens system resilience. Use data to inform technical investments and measure impact. Contribute across the organization: Collaborate across the Diner Platform and the broader engineering organization. Align team decisions with platform standards while influencing direction with practical insights. Continuously raise the bar for engineering quality, execution, and leadership. What We Are Looking For Technical leadership: Experience building and operating distributed, high availability backend systems. Strong system design fundamentals including APIs, data modeling, scalability, and resiliency. Experience with event driven architectures and modern backend stacks such as .NET, Java, or similar technologies. Familiarity with data stores, caching technologies like Redis, and high throughput systems. Ability to make sound decisions in ambiguous and high stakes environments. People leadership: Experience managing and developing engineers, including senior individual contributors. A leadership style grounded in clarity, accountability, and respect. A track record of building strong teams and creating an environment where people can do their best work. Execution and collabo…