Engineering Manager - Indirect Channel (Direct Connect API & Web)
Description
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
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Provide senior technical leadership for the architecture and engineering of large-scale, mission-critical enterprise applications and platforms
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Define enterprise application architecture strategies aligned with business objectives, technology roadmaps, and long-term modernization goals
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Architect highly available, scalable, resilient, and secure distributed systems supporting high transaction volumes and critical customer journeys
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Establish architectural standards and reference architectures for microservices, APIs, event-driven systems, cloud platforms, and enterprise integration
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Lead architecture reviews and provide technical direction across multiple engineering teams and technology domains
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Translate complex business requirements into scalable technical architectures and actionable engineering roadmaps
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Identify architectural risks, technical debt, scalability constraints, and modernization opportunities
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Drive technology decisions across build-vs-buy, platform capabilities, integration patterns, and modernization approaches
API-First & API Platform Strategy
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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
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Architect and govern enterprise-scale API platforms using technologies such as Apigee, 3scale, and RedSwift
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Establish standards for API design, governance, versioning, lifecycle management, security, discoverability, throttling, monetization, and observability
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Design API products that enable rapid integration across digital channels, mobile applications, GDS platforms, partners, and internal enterprise systems
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Define API gateway and management strategies across hybrid cloud, on-premises, and legacy environments
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Architect secure API ecosystems using OAuth2, OpenID Connect, JWT, mTLS, rate limiting, API policies, and enterprise identity platforms
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Establish API resiliency patterns including throttling, circuit breakers, retries, caching, traffic management, and graceful degradation
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Drive API reuse and standardization across engineering organizations to reduce duplication and accelerate delivery
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Establish API SLAs, SLOs, performance standards, and operational governance
GDS Architecture & Integration
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Provide architectural leadership for Global Distribution System (GDS) capabilities and their integration with modern digital platforms
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Design high-volume, low-latency architectures connecting GDS, reservation, rental, availability, pricing, customer, fleet, and partner ecosystems
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Lead modernization of GDS and legacy integrations through API-first and event-driven architectures
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Architect integration patterns between GDS platforms, mainframe systems, Java microservices, cloud services, and external partners
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Evaluate opportunities to decouple tightly coupled legacy capabilities while maintaining business continuity and transactional integrity
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Establish scalable integration patterns supporting multiple channels, partners, aggregators, and downstream consumers
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Ensure GDS integrations meet enterprise requirements for performance, availability, resiliency, security, and operational support
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Lead architecture for high-volume transaction processing where latency, consistency, and availability are critical
AWS & Cloud Architecture
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Architect and lead modernization of enterprise applications onto AWS using cloud-native and hybrid-cloud patterns
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Design highly available architectures leveraging AWS services across compute, networking, storage, messaging, security, and observability
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Establish AWS CDN and edge delivery strategies to improve performance, availability, and scalability for customer-facing applications and APIs
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Architect global traffic management, caching, edge routing, load balancing, and content delivery strategies
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Design solutions using technologies such as Amazon CloudFront, API Gateway, ECS/EKS, Lambda, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, SQS/SNS, and other appropriate AWS services
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Establish cloud architecture standards covering security, networking, identity, resiliency, cost optimization, and operational excellence
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Lead hybrid-cloud integration between AWS, enterprise data centers, mainframe environments, and GDS platforms
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Ensure cloud platforms are designed for enterprise-scale availability, disaster recovery, observability, and performance
Microservices & Distributed Systems
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Lead the transformation of monolithic and legacy applications into domain-aligned microservices and distributed systems
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Define service boundaries using domain-driven design and enterprise architecture principles
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Establish patterns for synchronous and asynchronous communication across distributed services
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Drive adoption of event-driven architecture using technologies such as Kafka, messaging platforms, and cloud-native event services
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Ensure microservices are independently deployable, observable, scalable, and resilient
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Define strategies for distributed transactions, eventual consistency, idempotency, service discovery, configuration management, and fault tolerance
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Establish engineering standards for Java/Spring Boot-based services and other appropriate technology stacks
Mainframe & Legacy Modernization
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Lead architecture and modernization initiatives spanning mainframe, GDS, Java, APIs, and cloud platforms
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Develop pragmatic modernization strategies that preserve critical business capabilities while reducing legacy dependencies
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Establish API façade and strangler-pattern approaches for progressively modernizing legacy applications
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Identify capabilities that should be exposed through APIs, migrated to microservices, or retained within existing systems of record
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Ensure modernization initiatives maintain transactional integrity, business continuity, and operational stability
Engineering Management & Organizational Leadership
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Lead and manage multiple engineering teams and technical leads responsible for enterprise platforms and applications
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Build a culture of engineering excellence, accountability, innovation, and continuous improvement
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Mentor senior engineers, architects, and engineering managers
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Establish engineering career development, technical growth, and succession strategies
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Partner with Product, Enterpri