Python Data Engineer

Booking Holdings Romania is a Center of Excellence based in Bucharest, Romania and was created to support the increasing business demands of the Booking Holdings Brands. The Center of Excellence provides access to specialized and highly skilled talent, leading industry best practices, and collaboration opportunities across all of our Brands. As part of our Booking Holdings Romania team, you will have the opportunity to be a part of the world’s leading provider of online travel, with a mission of making it easier for everyone to experience the world through five-primary consumer facing brands: Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, KAYAK and OpenTable. Role description As a Data Engineer, you will independently design, build, and operate reliable data pipelines and platforms that power analytics, experimentation, and product decision-making across the organisation. You take ownership of the quality and reliability of the workflows you build, and you work closely with software engineers, data scientists, analysts, and business stakeholders to ensure high-quality, well-modeled, and trustworthy data is available at scale. This role sits within the Product Security department and helps build software to protect the world's largest travel platform against attacks to its account & authorisation system. This role provides a hybrid way of working with an onsite presence of 2 days/week. Key Job Responsibilities and Duties Design, build, and operate data pipelines and Airflow workflows (DAGs) (batch and/or streaming) to ingest, transform, and deliver data from diverse sources into analytics and operational data stores. Develop and maintain data models (e.g. dimensional, vault, or other analytical models) that are consistent, well-documented, and optimised for downstream use cases. Ensure data quality and reliability end-to-end by implementing validation, monitoring, testing, and alerting across pipelines, Airflow workflows, and datasets, with clear SLOs and error budgets where applicable. Own the operational excellence of the workflows you develop, including on-call participation where relevant, incident triage, troubleshooting, and driving root-cause analysis and follow-ups to prevent regressions. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to understand data needs, translate them into technical solutions, and enable self-service access to data where appropriate. Operate and improve big data platforms and tooling, following modern data engineering best practices, version control, and CI/CD workflows. Manage data governance aspects within your scope: ownership of datasets, documentation, access control, and alignment with security and privacy requirements. Contribute to craft standards and frameworks, sharing best practices, improving shared Airflow patterns and libraries, and mentoring more junior engineers where relevant. Role Qualifications and Requirements Proven experience (3+ years) as a Data Engineer or in a similar data-focused engineering role, working with large-scale or complex datasetsStrong skills in at least one programming language commonly used for data engineering (preferably Python, Java is also acceptable).Hands-on experience with data processing frameworks (e.g. Spark, Flink, Beam or similar) and SQL for working with relational and analytical databases.Practical experience designing, implementing, and operating Airflow DAGs(or similar workflow orchestration tools), including dependency management, scheduling, and observability.Experience building and operating ETL/ELT pipelines on modern data platforms (e.g. cloud data warehouses, data lakes, or lakehouses).Experience with stream processing and real-time data products (e.g. Kafka, Kinesis, or similar).Understanding of data modeling concepts (e.g. dimensional modeling, Data Vault, star/snowflake schemas) and how they support analytics and reporting.Familiarity with version control, testing, and CI/CD practices for data workflows, including automated validation and deployment of Airflow changes.Experience using AI-assisted engineering tools responsibly to improve productivity while maintaining strong standards for quality, privacy, and security.Ability to identify pragmatic opportunities to leverage AI in data engineering workflows, for example in data quality monitoring, anomaly detection, metadata enrichment, lineage insights, or incident investigation.Ability to communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders, explaining trade-offs and data design decisions.Find solutions to difficult or complex issues by applying different skills and techniques like analytical thinking, lateral thinking, and logical reasoning Constructively improve existing ideas, plans and solutions by reviewing them in a critical yet constructive manner, initiating concrete improvements and articulating their rationale Continuous Quality and Process Improvement Identify opportunities for process, system and/or structural improvements, by applying an understanding of process flows and the methods that can be used to boost effectiveness and efficiency Deliver clear, well-structured, and meaningful information to a target audience by using suitable communication mediums and language tailored to the audienceAchieve mutually agreeable solutions by staying adaptable, communicating ideas in clear coherent language and practicing active listening. Benefits & Perks Contributing to a high scale, complex, world-renowned product and seeing real-time impact of your work on millions of travelers worldwide Working in a fast-paced and performance driven culture Technical, behavioral and interpersonal competence advancement via on-the-job opportunities, experimental projects, hackathons, conferences and active community participation Competitive compensation and benefits package Vast amounts of data to validate your ideas and the opportunity to experiment with real users Booking Holdings is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. We strive to move well beyond traditional equal opportunity and work to create an environment that allows everyone to thrive. Pre-Employment Screening If your application is successful, your personal data may be used for a pre-employment screening check by a third party as permitted by applicable law. Depending on the vacancy and applicable law, a pre-employment screening may include employment history, education and other information (such as media information) that may be necessary for determining your qualifications and suitability for the position.