Engineering Manager - Indirect Channel (Direct Connect API & Web)

About this role

Driven to be the Best

People. Performance. Purpose.

At Avis Budget Group, we’re driven to be the best vehicle rental company in the world, together. Our 25,000 employees raise the bar every day, bringing different perspectives, taking ownership, and leading with integrity. We’re defining the future of mobility with safe, sustainable solutions that move people, businesses, and communities forward.

Avis Budget Group is seeking a highly experienced Engineering Manager/Lead Architect to provide technical leadership for the architecture, engineering, modernization, and operation of large-scale enterprise applications and API platforms.

This role is ideal for a technology leader with 15–17+ years of experience architecting and managing complex, highly distributed enterprise systems, with deep expertise in API-centric architectures, microservices, cloud platforms, GDS (Global Distribution Systems), and legacy modernization.

The successful candidate will lead the evolution of Avis Budget Group's technology ecosystem toward a modern, API-first, cloud-native architecture, while ensuring seamless integration with existing mainframe, GDS, reservation, fleet, rental, and enterprise systems.

You will operate at the intersection of enterprise architecture, engineering leadership, product delivery, and technology strategy, influencing architectural decisions across multiple engineering organizations and leading teams responsible for business-critical platforms operating at significant scale.

What You'll Do: Enterprise Architecture & Technical Leadership Provide senior technical leadership for the architecture and engineering of large-scale, mission-critical enterprise applications and platforms

Define enterprise application architecture strategies aligned with business objectives, technology roadmaps, and long-term modernization goals

Architect highly available, scalable, resilient, and secure distributed systems supporting high transaction volumes and critical customer journeys

Establish architectural standards and reference architectures for microservices, APIs, event-driven systems, cloud platforms, and enterprise integration

Lead architecture reviews and provide technical direction across multiple engineering teams and technology domains

Translate complex business requirements into scalable technical architectures and actionable engineering roadmaps

Identify architectural risks, technical debt, scalability constraints, and modernization opportunities

Drive technology decisions across build-vs-buy, platform capabilities, integration patterns, and modernization approaches

API-First & API Platform Strategy Own and evolve the enterprise API strategy, establishing APIs as the primary integration mechanism between customer-facing applications, GDS platforms, internal systems, partners, and third-party ecosystems

Architect and govern enterprise-scale API platforms using technologies such as Apigee, 3scale, and RedSwift

Establish standards for API design, governance, versioning, lifecycle management, security, discoverability, throttling, monetization, and observability

Design API products that enable rapid integration across digital channels, mobile applications, GDS platforms, partners, and internal enterprise systems

Define API gateway and management strategies across hybrid cloud, on-premises, and legacy environments

Architect secure API ecosystems using OAuth2, OpenID Connect, JWT, mTLS, rate limiting, API policies, and enterprise identity platforms

Establish API resiliency patterns including throttling, circuit breakers, retries, caching, traffic management, and graceful degradation

Drive API reuse and standardization across engineering organizations to reduce duplication and accelerate delivery

Establish API SLAs, SLOs, performance standards, and operational governance

GDS Architecture & Integration Provide architectural leadership for Global Distribution System (GDS) capabilities and their integration with modern digital platforms

Design high-volume, low-latency architectures connecting GDS, reservation, rental, availability, pricing, customer, fleet, and partner ecosystems

Lead modernization of GDS and legacy integrations through API-first and event-driven architectures

Architect integration patterns between GDS platforms, mainframe systems, Java microservices, cloud services, and external partners

Evaluate opportunities to decouple tightly coupled legacy capabilities while maintaining business continuity and transactional integrity

Establish scalable integration patterns supporting multiple channels, partners, aggregators, and downstream consumers

Ensure GDS integrations meet enterprise requirements for performance, availability, resiliency, security, and operational support

Lead architecture for high-volume transaction processing where latency, consistency, and availability are critical

AWS & Cloud Architecture Architect and lead modernization of enterprise applications onto AWS using cloud-native and hybrid-cloud patterns

Design highly available architectures leveraging AWS services across compute, networking, storage, messaging, security, and observability

Establish AWS CDN and edge delivery strategies to improve performance, availability, and scalability for customer-facing applications and APIs

Architect global traffic management, caching, edge routing, load balancing, and content delivery strategies

Design solutions using technologies such as Amazon CloudFront, API Gateway, ECS/EKS, Lambda, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, SQS/SNS, and other appropriate AWS services

Establish cloud architecture standards covering security, networking, identity, resiliency, cost optimization, and operational excellence

Lead hybrid-cloud integration between AWS, enterprise data centers, mainframe environments, and GDS platforms

Ensure cloud platforms are designed for enterprise-scale availability, disaster recovery, observability, and performance

Microservices & Distributed Systems Lead the transformation of monolithic and legacy applications into domain-aligned microservices and distributed systems

Define service boundaries using domain-driven design and enterprise architecture principles

Establish patterns for synchronous and asynchronous communication across distributed services

Drive adoption of event-driven architecture using technologies such as Kafka, messaging platforms, and cloud-native event services

Ensure microservices are independently deployable, observable, scalable, and resilient

Define strategies for distributed transactions, eventual consistency, idempotency, service discovery, configuration management, and fault tolerance

Establish engineering standards for Java/Spring Boot-based services and other appropriate technology stacks

Mainframe & Legacy Modernization Lead architecture and modernization initiatives spanning mainframe, GDS, Java, APIs, and cloud platforms

Develop pragmatic modernization strategies that preserve critical business capabilities while reducing legacy dependencies

Establish API façade and strangler-pattern approaches for progressively modernizing legacy applications

Identify capabilities that should be exposed through APIs, migrated to microservices, or retained within existing systems of record

Ensure modernization initiatives maintain transactional integrity, business continuity, and operational stability

Engineering Management & Organizational Leadership Lead and manage multiple engineering teams and technical leads responsible for enterprise platforms and applications

Build a culture of engineering excellence, accountability, innovation, and continuous improvement

Mentor senior engineers, architects, and engineering managers

Establish engineering career development, technical growth, and succession strategies

Partner with Product, Enterprise Architecture, Infrastructure, Security, Data, DevOps, and business stakeholders

Manage complex technical programs involving multiple teams, systems, vendors, and organizational dependencies

Establish effective engineering operating models across geographically distributed teams

Drive Agile delivery while maintaining appropriate architecture governance and technical quality

Balance short-term delivery requirements with long-term platform sustainability and modernization

Reliability, Performance & Operational Excellence Architect systems capable of supporting enterprise-scale transaction volumes and customer traffic

Establish reliability engineering practices covering availability, resiliency, disaster recovery, and capacity planning

Define performance engineering strategies for APIs, GDS integrations, microservices, and customer-facing applications

Establish enterprise observability across APIs and distributed applications using metrics, logging, tracing, and real-time monitoring

Define SLOs, SLIs, operational KPIs, and production readiness standards

Lead architecture and engineering responses to complex production incidents and systemic reliability issues

Drive proactive capacity planning, performance testing, chaos/resiliency testing, and operational readiness

Security & API Governance Establish enterprise security architecture for APIs, microservices, cloud applications, and partner integrations

Ensure APIs comply with enterprise authentication, authorization, encryption, data protection, and audit requirements

Establish API security policies across Apigee, 3scale, RedSwift, and related API management platforms

Partner with Cybersecurity and Enterprise Architecture teams to implement Zero Trust and defense-in-depth principles

Ensure security is integrated throughout the software development lifecycle

What We're Looking For: 15–17+ years of progressive experience in software engineering, architecture, and technology leadership

Significant experience architecting and managing large-scale enterprise applications and distributed platforms

Proven experience leading multiple engineering teams and senior technical resources

Deep expertise in API-first and API-led architecture

Strong experience with API management platforms such as Apigee, 3scale, and RedSwift

Extensive experience designing RESTful APIs, API gateways, API products, and enterprise integration platforms

Strong understanding of GDS architecture and large-scale transaction processing

Extensive experience with Java, Spring Boot, microservices, and distributed systems

Significant hands-on experience with AWS architecture, including CDN/edge delivery and cloud-native services

Experience designing hybrid architectures spanning AWS, on-premises, mainframe, and GDS environments

Strong understanding of event-driven architecture, messaging, Kafka, and asynchronous integration patterns

Experience with enterprise application modernization and legacy/mainframe transformation

Strong knowledge of API security, OAuth2, OIDC, JWT, mTLS, rate limiting, and traffic management

Demonstrated experience with high availability, scalability, performance engineering, and disaster recovery

Strong understanding of DevOps, CI/CD, infrastructure automation, containers, and Kubernetes

Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence senior technical and business stakeholders

Preferred (Nice to Have): Experience architecting technology platforms within travel, transportation, mobility, hospitality, airline, rental-car, or similar high-volume transaction environments

Experience with large-scale reservation, availability, pricing, booking, or distribution platforms

Experience with AWS CloudFront and global edge architecture

Experience with Apigee API Management and enterprise API governance

Experience with RedSwift and/or 3scale API management ecosystems

Experience with Kafka and event-streaming architectures

Experience with Kubernetes/OpenShift and containerized enterprise applications

Experience with observability platforms such as Splunk, Dynatrace, Datadog, or equivalent

Experience implementing Domain-Driven Design and enterprise integration patterns

Experience with mainframe technologies including COBOL, CICS, DB2, and JCL

Experience managing large technology transformation programs involving multiple platforms and engineering organizations

The annual starting salary for this position is between $130,000 – 160,000 annually. Factors that may affect starting pay within this range include geography/market, skills, education, experience, and other qualifications of the successful candidate.

Who We Are: Here at Avis Budget Group, you will be joining a team of 25,000 driven people, performing with purpose. Together, we’re moving the future of transportation forward with our innovative, customer-focused solutions.

Our culture is performance driven, where we encourage and support each other to be at our best through leadership, training, tools, and rewards.

We are proud to make a positive difference to the lives of our colleagues, customers, and communities where we operate.

Avis Budget Group is an Equal Opportunity Employer – Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, status as a protected veteran or any other category protected by applicable law. This advertisement does not constitute a promise or guarantee of employment. This advertisement describes the general nature and level of this position only. Essential functions and responsibilities may change as business needs require. The compensation and benefits information is accurate as of the date of this posting. The Company reserves the right to modify this information at any time, with or without notice, subject to applicable law. This position may be with any affiliate of Avis Budget Group.

Parsippany

New Jersey

United States of America