A Day in the Life of a Backend Engineer at Agoda

by Vivek Parmani

Backend engineers are critical to ensuring Agoda’s systems run seamlessly, managing the intricate processes behind the scenes. Vivek Parmani, a lead backend engineer at Agoda, shares insights into his role, highlighting the skills and mindset required for success. Since joining Agoda six years ago, Vivek has worked on impactful projects, collaborated with a diverse team, and grown professionally and personally. Here’s a glimpse into his journey and daily responsibilities at Agoda.

Joining Agoda: My Journey and Responsibilities

I joined Agoda as a Senior Software Engineer and have since progressed to a Lead position. As a Senior Software Engineer, I focused on deliverables — coding, testing, and ensuring high-quality output. The primary difference between the roles is that, as a Lead, my responsibilities have expanded significantly beyond coding. My routine includes design reviews, meetings, code reviews, cross-team communication, stakeholder management, mentoring junior engineers, enabling scalable tech development processes in the team, and ensuring monitoring and logging are in place while syncing with the NOC, infrastructure, and Private Cloud teams.

In my current projects at Agoda, the backend programming languages and technologies are Kotlin, Scala, and C#. While Kotlin is emerging as the future language due to its modern features, Scala remains predominant because many systems are built with it. Additionally, my experience with different technologies, including C# and Scala, has broadened my skill set and proved valuable in various projects.

What Makes Agoda Stand Out

Agoda stands out to me as a place to work due to its multicultural diversity, global exposure, and the significant impact even small changes can make. The work-life balance, the opportunity to work with smart people, and the open communication culture — where even the most junior team member can share ideas — make it a unique and rewarding environment. At Agoda, we value being direct and respectful, which fosters an open and honest work environment.

Project Involvement and Technical Challenges

One of the most significant projects I worked on at Agoda is the cashback system. This project required collaboration across various teams, including pricing, booking, payments, and finance. We successfully launched the cashback API within a tight deadline, showcasing our ability to deliver complex projects on time. This project highlights Agoda’s value of taking ownership and making a difference.

Another major project was the Payments Experiment Platform. This project aimed to enable experimentation between different payment gateways without requiring repeated coding efforts. Despite initial skepticism, I designed and implemented a solution that now runs live. Our team swiftly integrates multiple payment methods yearly to keep up with varying patterns. This quick addition of customized payments allows customers to pay using various options. We strive to design payment systems that are easy to use and provide an enhanced customer experience. That is why our payments are highly localized and based on the market they serve.

Working with third-party payment gateways brings inevitable operational challenges, such as missing payment settlement files, which require sensitive monitoring alerts to avoid monetary loss. I collaborated with teams like infra and NOC to address these issues, reducing operational work by 70%. The Payments Experiment Platform, which enabled gateway experimentation with no code changes and was delivered in one quarter, was one of the most demanding technical challenges I’ve solved at Agoda.

Collaboration and Innovation

Collaboration is key at Agoda. To align on technical and business goals, I ensure transparency and set up meetings with relevant teams, aligning the value and impact for Agoda overall. Effective cross-team collaboration was crucial in delivering the cashback project in record time. Identifying and connecting with the right stakeholders quickly is essential for smooth project execution.

Problem-solving is at the core of my role. As engineers, we often face complex challenges that require innovative solutions. It’s crucial to not only identify problems but also propose viable solutions and assess their impact. Evaluating the return on investment (ROI) for proposed solutions helps prioritize efforts that bring the most significant benefits to the company.

Career Growth and Learning

Agoda supports continuous learning and professional growth through mentorship, direction from senior management, 1:1 sessions with managers, and access to resources like LinkedIn Learning and Udemy. Programs like Tech Talk and Agoda’s “Tech Grow Aspire” (a first-time manager program designed to create a strong foundation for new managers) have particularly impacted my development.

Advice for Aspiring Engineers

For mid-level engineers aspiring to reach senior positions, my advice is to focus on identifying problems and proactively bringing potential solutions to the table. Even if the solutions are imperfect, a thorough understanding of the problem significantly enhances your ability to find practical solutions.

It’s essential to stay engaged with technical challenges in products, especially as they scale globally and become more distributed. Additionally, developing strong, soft skills is crucial; presenting problems clearly, advocating for your solutions with conviction, and working collaboratively with others will help you advance in backend engineering.

Conclusion

Being a backend engineer at Agoda is dynamic and challenging, requiring a blend of technical expertise, problem-solving abilities, and strong communication skills. My journey at Agoda has been rewarding, offering continuous learning, collaboration, and the chance to contribute to innovative solutions in the travel industry. Agoda provides an opportunity for those passionate about backend development to work on complex systems and make a global impact.