Engineering Manager - Global Digital Backend Services

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 an experienced Engineering Manager to lead the design, development, modernization, and delivery of highly scalable technology solutions across our digital and core rental platforms.

This role combines hands-on technical leadership, engineering management, Java/microservices expertise, and mainframe modernization. The ideal candidate will be comfortable operating across modern cloud-native architectures and established mainframe ecosystems, helping engineering teams evolve legacy capabilities into resilient, API-driven microservices.

You will lead a team of engineers, work closely with architects and product leaders, and establish engineering practices that improve scalability, reliability, security, and speed of delivery.

What You’ll Do:

Engineering Leadership

• Lead and mentor a team of Java engineers, senior developers, and technical leads, fostering a high-performing engineering culture.

• Own engineering execution across multiple applications, services, and technology initiatives.

• Partner with Product, Architecture, DevOps, QA, Security, and other technology teams to define and deliver business-critical capabilities.

• Establish engineering standards around code quality, architecture, testing, observability, security, and performance.

• Provide technical direction while remaining sufficiently hands-on to guide complex engineering decisions and troubleshoot critical issues.

• Drive Agile engineering practices, continuous improvement, and effective delivery across distributed teams.

• Coach engineers and technical leads through architecture, design, code reviews, and career development.

Java & Microservices Architecture

• Lead the design and development of Java-based, cloud-ready microservices using technologies such as Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, REST APIs, and event-driven architectures.

• Define and promote scalable, resilient, loosely coupled service architectures.

• Establish API-first development practices, including API design, versioning, security, documentation, and lifecycle management.

• Drive modernization of monolithic applications into domain-oriented microservices where appropriate.

• Design solutions using asynchronous messaging, event streaming, and distributed processing patterns.

• Ensure services meet enterprise requirements for availability, scalability, performance, resiliency, and security.

• Promote containerization and cloud-native engineering practices using technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.

• Establish effective observability using centralized logging, metrics, distributed tracing, alerting, and application performance monitoring.

Mainframe & Legacy Modernization

• Lead engineering initiatives that integrate mainframe applications and systems of record with modern Java and microservices platforms.

• Work with mainframe teams to understand COBOL, CICS, DB2, batch processing, and existing enterprise interfaces.

• Define modernization strategies that expose appropriate mainframe capabilities through APIs and modern integration patterns.

• Identify opportunities to decouple legacy functionality and incrementally migrate capabilities to Java/microservices architectures.

• Design reliable integration between mainframe systems and modern distributed applications.

• Balance modernization objectives with the stability, performance, and operational requirements of mission-critical legacy platforms.

• Help establish patterns for strangler-architecture modernization, service extraction, API enablement, and phased migration.

Cloud, DevOps & Engineering Excellence

• Partner with DevOps and Cloud Engineering teams to implement CI/CD pipelines and automated deployment practices.

• Promote Infrastructure-as-Code, automated testing, quality gates, and repeatable deployment processes.

• Drive adoption of cloud-native technologies and engineering practices.

• Establish automated unit, integration, contract, performance, and end-to-end testing strategies.

• Ensure applications are designed with appropriate security controls, resiliency patterns, disaster recovery, and operational readiness.

• Monitor engineering metrics and continuously improve development velocity, quality, and production stability.

What We’re Looking For:

• 10–12+ years of software engineering experience, with significant experience in Java/J2EE development.

• Proven experience leading engineering teams as an Engineering Manager, Development Manager, Lead Engineer, or Technical Lead.

• Strong hands-on expertise with Java, Spring Boot, REST APIs, and microservices architecture.

• Strong understanding of distributed systems, service-oriented architecture, design patterns, and enterprise integration.

• Experience designing and implementing highly scalable, high-availability applications.

• Experience with mainframe technologies and integration.

• Demonstrated experience modernizing or integrating legacy/mainframe applications with modern Java platforms.

• Experience with relational databases such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, or DB2.

• Experience with messaging/event technologies such as Kafka, MQ, or similar platforms.

• Working knowledge of Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or GCP.

• Strong understanding of CI/CD, DevOps, automated testing, monitoring, and production support.

• Experience with Agile/Scrum software development methodologies.

• Strong communication, stakeholder management, mentoring, and leadership skills.

Preferred (Nice to Have):

• Experience leading large-scale digital or enterprise modernization programs.

• Experience with AWS or Azure in a production enterprise environment.

• Experience with Kafka, IBM MQ, API gateways, and event-driven architectures.

• Experience with Kubernetes/OpenShift and containerized Java applications.

• Knowledge of domain-driven design and enterprise integration patterns.

• Experience implementing observability using tools such as Splunk, Datadog, Dynatrace, or similar platforms.

• Experience with OAuth2, OpenID Connect, JWT, and enterprise API security.

• Experience working within highly regulated or high-availability enterprise environments.

• Experience in travel, transportation, mobility, automotive, hospitality, or rental-car technology is a plus.

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.

ParsippanyNew JerseyUnited States of America