Fora is the modern travel agency, empowering anyone with a passion for travel to build a thriving advisory business. We're modernizing the $100B+ travel agency industry by combining powerful technology, data, and community to enable thousands of entrepreneurs to build on our platform. Our business-in-a-box platform gives travel entrepreneurs everything they need to launch and scale, from cutting-edge tools and personalized training to a vibrant community and exclusive industry partnerships. At the heart of it all is our mission: to help the next generation of travel entrepreneurs turn their love for travel into a fulfilling career, whether full-time or part-time. We believe that everyone, from seasoned professionals to first-time advisors, can build something both profitable and personal.
Founded in 2021 by seasoned entrepreneurs, Fora has grown steadily since, expanding to a team of 200+ full-time employees based in downtown New York City. In 2025, we announced our $60 million Series B and C investment rounds, led by Thrive Capital and Insight Partners, with participation by previous investors including Forerunner and Heartcore Capital. We've also been recognized as a LinkedIn Top Startup 2024, Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies 2025 and 2023, and Built In 2025 Best Places to Work.
We're building the first truly unified platform for all travel needs—leveraging the best of human expertise and technology to transform how people plan and book travel.
We’re looking for an experienced Senior/Staff Software engineer to lead and scale the foundational systems that power Fora’s platform. In this role, you’ll own the reliability, scalability, and developer experience of our infrastructure — including CI/CD pipelines, cloud architecture, observability systems, and core platform security. You’ll partner closely with Engineering, and cross-functional stakeholders to ensure our systems are fast, secure, and built to scale with our business.
Our ideal candidate is a mission-aligned leader with a strong track record of building high scale and secure platforms, an understanding of devops, data pipelines and distributed systems, and a passion for scaling both products and teams.
Key Responsibilities- Optimize database performance and reliability, managing PostgreSQL configurations, connection pooling, timeout settings, and query performance at scale.
- Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines that enable rapid, safe deployments with progressive rollout capabilities and automated rollback mechanisms.
- Manage message queue infrastructure including RabbitMQ and Celery workers, ensuring optimal throughput and preventing memory pressure issues.
- Build developer tools and platforms that accelerate engineering velocity, including feature flag systems, development environments, and debugging tools.
- Implement infrastructure as code using Terraform, ensuring all infrastructure changes are versioned, reviewed, and reproducible.
- Architect and implement monitoring and observability solutions using Datadog, CloudWatch, and custom metrics to ensure comprehensive system visibility.
- Drive security and compliance initiatives, including secrets management, network segmentation.
- Partner with engineering teams to establish SLOs, implement proper error budgets, and ensure services meet reliability targets.
- Design and maintain our container orchestration layer, bonus if familiar with Kubernetes.
- 5+ years of experience in engineering, at least 2 in platform engineering
- Strong experience with AWS services (EKS, RDS, ALB/ELB, SQS, CloudWatch, IAM)
- Proven track record with infrastructure as code tools (Terraform preferred)
- Experience with PostgreSQL administration including performance tuning, replication, and connection management
- Experience with message queue systems (RabbitMQ, Kafka, Celery, or similar)
- Proficiency with monitoring and observability tools (Datadog, Prometheus, or similar APM solutions)
- Experience implementing CI/CD pipelines and deployment strategies (blue-green, canary, feature flags)
- Understanding of security best practices including secrets management, network security, and compliance requirements
- Expertise with container orchestration in production environments, including cluster management, networking, and troubleshooting (Kubernetes preferred)
- Excellent communication skills with ability to explain complex infrastructure concepts to diverse audiences
- Experience with cost optimization and capacity planning for cloud infrastructure
- Experience with high-traffic B2B2C platforms or marketplace architectures.
Compensation for this role varies based on experience, with an indicative range of $155K–$225K + equity. Final compensation will depend on the level at which the candidate is hired, as we’re considering multiple levels for this role.
- Unlimited vacation
- Health Insurance (including an option completely covered by Fora HQ)
- Dental & Vision Insurance
- Wellhub Memberships
- 401k plan with company match
- Commuter Benefits
- Supplemental Life Insurance
- Stock Options
This role is based in New York City with a hybrid WFH & office schedule (Monday, Tuesday and Thursday are our Tribeca in-office days, with flexibility for Wednesday and Friday at your preference).
We’re forging our own path
Fora has always been about driving change within the industry. We’re not interested in maintaining the status quo.
We’re stronger together
Community is our cornerstone and collective power is our strength. We believe we can all go further when we operate together, using our combined leverage to unlock better opportunities and outcomes for our advisors, partners, and travelers.
We believe in technology
We believe technology is an answer to some of the most fundamental challenges the travel industry faces. We believe advancements in AI, bold investments in our platforms, and a world-class data infrastructure will transform the work of our advisors and our partners, while creating better travel experiences for travelers.
We’re here to serve
We operate in service of our community and believe that when they’re empowered to focus on what they do best, we all win. It’s why we relentlessly advocate for our advisors and prioritize their best interest every step of the way.
We mean business
Fora is equal parts fun, meaningful work and serious travel business. We’re unlocking opportunities for thousands of travel entrepreneurs, delivering a stream of high-quality guests at scale for our partners, and providing a superior travel experience for our travelers. It’s a better equation for the future of our industry.
WORK AUTHORIZATION
Authorization to work in the United States is required for full-time roles based in our New York City office. Fora is unable to sponsor or assist with U.S. work authorization. Roles based outside of the United States are not subject to this requirement.
EQUAL OPPORTUNITY
Fora is committed to an equitable hiring process and an inclusive work environment. BIPOC and traditionally underrepresented candidates are strongly encouraged to apply. We will not discriminate and will take action to ensure against discrimination in employment, recruitment, advertisements for employment, compensation, termination, upgrading, promotions, and other conditions of employment against any employee or job applicant on the bases of race, color, gender, national origin, age, religion, creed, disability, veteran's status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression or any other characteristic protected by law.
Fora New York, New York, USA Office
New York, NY, United States, 10013
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