StaffSoftwareEngineer

At Navan, our mission is to power the in-person connections that move people, ideas, and businesses forward. We help travelers focus on being there, not getting there. Our engineering organization plays a critical role in delivering seamless, reliable, and intelligent experiences across travel and expense management at global scale. We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to join our Expense Platform team in Berlin. In this role, you will lead the design and evolution of distributed systems that power the full expense lifecycle — from expense creation and approvals to reimbursements and financial reconciliation. You will partner closely with engineering leaders, product managers, designers, and cross-functional stakeholders to drive technical strategy, platform scalability, and engineering excellence across the organization. As a senior technical leader, you will influence architecture decisions, mentor engineers, improve developer productivity, and help shape the future of Navan’s expense platform as we continue to scale globally. What You’ll Do Architect, build, and scale backend microservices using Java and Spring Boot Lead the design of event-driven systems leveraging Kafka, AWS SQS, and distributed messaging patterns Drive technical strategy and long-term platform architecture decisions Design and develop high-performance REST APIs and integrations with external financial and payment systems Own critical expense workflows including reimbursements, cash advances, mileage, per diem, and approvals Improve receipt ingestion, OCR processing pipelines, and automation capabilities Ensure platform reliability, scalability, observability, and operational excellence Champion engineering best practices including testing, CI/CD, code quality, and incident management Mentor and guide engineers across teams through technical leadership and design reviews Collaborate cross-functionally with product, operations, and finance teams to deliver impactful solutions Identify op