The posting
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
