Senior Software Engineer – AI Discovery Team

Senior Software Engineer – AI Discovery Team At On the Beach, we’re redefining how millions of customers discover, plan and book their holidays. Our platform sits at the heart of that experience and we’re now investing in the next frontier: AI-driven travel discovery. We’re forming a new AI Discovery team. A small, senior led group with a mandate to explore and shape the future of how customers search, discover and plan their trips. This is not a traditional product team. It’s an innovation-focused environment where experienced engineers lead ideas end-to-end, from concept through to real world validation working directly on problems that could redefine the customer experience. About the Role As a Senior Software Engineer in the AI Discovery team, you’ll work at the frontier of applied AI building and testing new product experiences with real customers. You’ll focus on rapid experimentation and intelligent prototyping, exploring areas such as: Conversational trip planning AI-powered personalisation and recommendations New search and discovery paradigms using LLMs Agent based and workflow-driven experiences This role is about learning fast and building the right things, not just building things right. You’ll collaborate closely with product managers, designers, analysts and researchers to design experiments, validate ideas and identify which opportunities are worth scaling into full product capabilities. Why This Role Is Different You’ll work on AI-driven problems that reach real customers, not just internal demos, with the autonomy to explore ideas in a low-process, high-trust environment. This is a role where you’ll help shape product direction as much as implementation, while influencing how AI is adopted across the organisation. You’ll be part of a small, experienced team focused on solving meaningful problems and driving real impact. Why Join Us This is an opportunity to work at the intersection of AI, product, and customer experience, contributing to how a well-established travel platform continues to evolve with new technologies. If you enjoy exploring new ideas, experimenting with emerging tools, and building solutions that can influence product direction, we’d love to hear from you! What you’ll be doing day to day Design and build lean, high-impact prototypes to test hypotheses with real customers Run multiple experiments each quarter using approaches like fake-door tests, rapid prototypes and beta releases Explore and apply modern AI capabilities, including LLMs, retrieval systems and recommendation techniques Work across the full stack: from backend services and APIs to frontend experiences Collaborate with cross-functional partners to design experiments that maximise learning Iterate quickly based on qualitative and quantitative feedback Partner with existing product teams when experimenting in their domains Contribute to internal tooling, patterns and approaches that accelerate AI adoption across engineering Balance speed and pragmatism, knowing when to move fast and when to invest in robustness You’ll be a great addition to our team if you have the following skills, knowledge and experience We’re looking for experienced engineers who are comfortable operating in ambiguous, fast-moving environments and enjoy solving new types of problems. Strong full-stack engineering skills, with the ability to ship working software quickly Experience working with modern AI/ML tools or APIs (e.g. LLMs, OpenAI, Anthropic, Bedrock or similar) A track record of working in ambiguous problem spaces and driving ideas forward The ability to make pragmatic technical decisions with incomplete information Experience building prototypes, MVPs, or working in innovation focused environments A strong product mindset (you care about customer impact, not just technical elegance!) Confidence communicating ideas and trade-offs to both technical and non-technical stakeholders A collaborative approach and the ability to work effectively across team boundaries Nice to Have Experience validating product ideas through experimentation (A/B testing, user research, etc.) Exposure to recommendation systems, search or personalisation problems Experience contributing to technical direction or mentoring other engineers What Success Looks Like Success in this role is defined by the impact you create and the speed at which we learn, rather than output alone. You’ll run high-quality experiments that generate meaningful insights, identify promising opportunities early, and help shape their direction. As ideas prove their value, you’ll play a key role in guiding them towards production while also helping to foster a broader culture of experimentation and AI adoption across engineering. What to expect from our interview process We’ll run a multiple stage interview process, one stage we may ask for you to pop in and visit in-person interview at our fabulous Aeroworks office in Manchester city centre. Alternatively we can usually accommodate a final stage virtually also. We want to make sure everybody has the opportunity to perform at their best. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the interview process please let the Talent Acquisition team know and they will be happy to assist. Ways of working Our full time hours are 37.5 per week, but we don't have rigid working hours so you can find the working pattern that's right for you. We have core working hours between 10am - 4pm, so we can collaborate and enjoy the social side of work. We also have hybrid working so we all work from home and from our Aeroworks office in Manchester City Centre. As a team we are in the office 1 day every 2 weeks (usually Tuesday or Wednesday). Our benefits We might be biased but we think our colleagues are pretty great. They're the people that have made On the Beach what it is today and continue to make it vibrant and successful tomorrow. That's why we offer a competitive benefits package, known as our Beach Perks, to all On the Beach colleagues. These include: 25 days holiday plus your birthday off Generous discount on holidays, plus you will receive 2 extra days annual leave on top of your holiday allowance to use whilst you're away on your On the Beach package holiday Access to Learnerbly learning platform, plus workshops, courses and professional qualifications Enhanced maternity, paternity, shared parental leave and adoption pay, plus other family friendly support Employee Assistance Programme and free access to counselling Simplyhealth Optimise Health Plan Company Sick Pay scheme Regular wellbeing events Gym discount Share Incentive Plan (SIP) Death in Service cover Onsite subsidised coffee shop The Sandbox (our very own bar) Food and drink discounts across a number of venues in Manchester City Centre Regular social events Cycle to Work scheme Department Product & Technology Role Product Engineering Locations Manchester Remote status Hybrid About On the Beach We're On the Beach! One of the UK's largest online package holiday specialists, with significant opportunities for growth. Founded in 2004 Co-workers 500 Turnover £128.2m